


Swan Song

by flylow



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Infidelity, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Talon Widowmaker | Amélie Lacroix, Pre-Talon Widowmaker | Amélie Lacroix, Recovery, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-25
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-01-22 20:09:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 45,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12489840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flylow/pseuds/flylow
Summary: Angela and Amelie become fast friends in the months preceding Amelie's kidnapping. Ten years later, Angela helps undo the harm Talon has done, and Amelie begins to properly mourn the life she's lost. (A story in two parts).





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm planning on this fic being fairly long, and, for certain thematic reasons, I've decided to slot the entirety of the story under a single work, rather than split it into parts (despite a large timeskip that should occur around the 15th chapter). The first part takes place about 8 years before present-day Overwatch, while the second, which should be at least twice as long, takes place about 10 years after the first. Hopefully the lore doesn't change too drastically within however much time it takes me to write this--I've tried to be faithful to most everything known as of the first chapter's publication. 
> 
> No rating yet, but I expect I'll have bumped it up to M/E by the time it's finished.
> 
> As a side note, it really bothers me when Angela is written, I assume inadvertently, as a Standard German speaker when she's actually Swiss (even though Lucie Pohl does voice all her lines in High German, as far as I can tell). I don't speak any dialect of Swiss German (or Standard German, for that matter), so I plan on using it only sparingly throughout this fic. I'll try my best to ensure it isn't insultingly off the mark when I do use it, though, and I apologize in advance if I butcher anything. Please feel free to correct me if you're a native speaker. 
> 
> Enjoy!

Angela decided, when the elevator she rode in slowed to a stop two levels before reaching the ground floor, that leaving the latest prototype of her caduceus staff in the office, rather than trying to sneak it home with her, had been a fine idea. Jack liked to keep resources on base, and Ana especially didn’t like to see her overwork herself on days off—best not bite the hand that fed her, if she could help it. The reports she had in hand would keep her busy tomorrow, anyways. She stopped herself leafing through them at the sound of the elevator doors sliding open, and blinked a couple times to pull her surroundings into focus again as she looked up. Here was a face she didn’t mind seeing. 

“Angela.” Gérard always seemed to have a quiet smile at the ready when she bumped into him. He was one of those natural born conversationalists that never let an awkward moment pass, and helmed dialogue without overbearing into it—something that Angela was thankful for, especially on nights like these, where she hardly had energy left to small talk. “Would’ve grabbed you a coffee from the staff room if I’d know I’d run into you.” He gestured with his own steaming cup. 

“You know, I have a French press in my office,” she told him. “If you ever want a better brew, you’re welcome to it.”

“And here I thought you worked long hours on willpower alone.”

“That would probably be better for my sleep hygiene.” She’d had her latest dose of caffeine just an hour ago, around five o’clock.

“Well,” Gérard said as he started to step off the elevator. “I promise not to tell your doctor if you don’t tell mine.” It wasn’t the first time he’d made the joke, but Angela found herself smiling anyway.

“My lips are sealed.”

“Besides, I try not to do this too often,” he told her before downing the rest of the cup’s contents. Angela waited for him as he stopped to throw it into a trashcan a dozen feet down the hallway. “It’s just—Amélie’s in town, you know. We see so little of each other lately, it’d be stupid to fall asleep early on the few evenings we can spend together.”

She’d met Amélie only a few times before, and could probably count the things she knew about her on one hand. She possessed a certain quiet and confident charm—her voice was low and warm, Angela remembered, and when she smiled, her eyes gleamed with something privately conspiratorial. The way she wore her height straddled the awkwardness of a woman only in her mid-twenties and the elegance one might expect of a professional dancer. Gérard had once said she was the most beautiful woman in the world, and after meeting her, Angela had been inclined to agree.

“Is she off work for a while?” she asked.

“Yeah, she’s on break for the summer, and—Oh!” He remembered something and turned to look at Angela with a bright smile. “I told you, didn’t I? We’re having a barbecue tomorrow, most of the team has the evening off. You’ll come, won’t you?”

He had told her, but she’d forgotten. They stepped out through the front doors of the building, and the draft that picked up and threatened to blow some of the papers from her hands gave her an excuse to look away for an instant as she held them in place close to her chest. “I… maybe,” she said softly. Gérard knew it meant she wasn’t planning on making it.

“Come on, Angela, please?”

“I want to, I do,” she insisted. “It’s just—I’m so close to a properly functional prototype of the suit, if I finish it before the next big mission, I might be able to convince Jack not to go through with mass manufacturing the biotic rifle Torb—”

“Is the fate of all biotic tech at Overwatch hinging on one evening’s worth of work?” he asked, prompting her to stop walking as he himself slowed down. She was about to say that yes, it very well could—that every second counted when she was so often pressed for time and unpredictably pulled away from her work. But he went on before she could say so. “Even if you stop by for only an hour—you know how rare it is for us all to have time off at the same time. We’ll miss you.”

A car pulling up to the curb just a few feet ahead of where they had stopped stole Gérard’s attention away before she could answer with another excuse. “Ah, perfect,” he said quietly to himself. “Come for just a second, Angela?” She was heading in the same direction anyways, so she followed him to the car, where he stopped just in front of the passenger door as the window rolled down.

“Mélie, you remember the doctor, don’t you?” he asked as he leaned closer to the window. Angela saw her, then, as she came closer to where Gérard was standing.

“Doctor Ziegler,” Amélie said with a smile. Angela was vaguely surprised she did remember. It had been a while. “Of course.” She had almost forgotten how thick her accent was—much thicker than Gérard’s, though his might have been better than her own, even.

“Good to see you again, Amélie.” Her voice came out quieter than she’d intended.

“Angela and I were just talking about the barbecue tomorrow,” Gérard said. “She’s on the fence about going.”

“I was looking forward to you being there,” Amélie said easily, and she meant it. Angela remembered vaguely, then, the last time they’d seen each other—Amélie, wearing a dress the color of the wine that had made her cheeks flush the lightest pink, had been Gérard’s plus one at the gala—when Amélie had told her they should see each other again, if ever they were in the same city soon. “We’ll all miss you.”

“See, Angela?”

“No, it’s alright,” Amélie told him before he could go on. “I imagine keeping everyone alive around here makes for a busy schedule. Come by next time if you can’t make it tomorrow, Doctor.” It always came out closer to ‘ _Docteur’_ whenever she said it.

Angela bit her tongue to keep herself from answering too eagerly. Gérard was looking at her with an almost infuriatingly smug smile, like he could tell it was only a matter of waiting now, to hear Angela give the answer he was fishing for. There was something in Amélie’s eyes, a trace of anticipation that seemed to beg Angela for a change of heart, and it made her huff softly before acquiescing, “No, I’ll—I’ll try to be there tomorrow. I will.” One corner of Amélie’s lips tugged into a smile at that.

“Wonderful,” she said. The sound of the handle snapping back pulled Angela’s attention away from Amélie as Gérard opened the car door.

“Come around…six, seven?” he said as he pulled himself into the passenger seat and looked to Amélie for confirmation. She shrugged.

“Either is fine.”

“Will do,” Angela said, taking a couple steps back from the car now that that was settled. She wondered briefly how late it would be by the time she made it back home, and if she should devote more time to working tonight now that she wouldn’t have the time tomorrow.

“ _À demain_.” Gérard waved to her, and behind him, Amélie smiled her way. Angela waved back as she watched the car pull away from the curb.

* * *

 

By the time she pressed her finger to the doorbell of Gérard’s apartment, it was seven thirty. The entrance gave off directly onto a small deck, with a set of stairs leading to the sidewalk, which she waited on as she listened to the sounds of voices coming from the fenced in patio she knew was on the other side of the building. Amélie came to answer the door after a short while.

“I was starting to think you weren’t going to show,” she said. There it was again, the warm tone in her voice that she remembered so well. She stepped forward and Amélie held a hand just to her shoulder as she leaned forward to kiss both her cheeks. “ _Ça va, Docteur?_ ”

“Mm,” she said in affirmation. She was, for an instant, about to tell her to do away with ‘ _docteur’_ in favor of calling her ‘Angela’, but the way the word rung when Amélie said it was almost endearing. She didn’t correct her on it.

“Come in.” She moved back with a gliding bounce in her step and beckoned Angela follow her. “I have a couple things on the stove—everyone’s out on the patio, if you wanted to head outside.”

“Do you need a hand with anything?”

Amélie hummed and turned to face Angela just as she reached the entryway to the kitchen. “Actually, if you don’t mind… I might need some help to carry everything out in a bit.” Angela followed her into the kitchen and couldn’t help but smile as the smell of food wafted towards her. “You got here right on time,” Amélie told her. “Gérard should be finishing up on the grill right now, and everything’s almost done here.”

“You make it sound as though I’ve only come for the food.”

“A good reason to come to a barbecue, no?” She bent down as she opened the oven just a crack, to peak at whatever was cooking there. “Almost done,” she said to herself. When she turned to Angela, she held her gaze for an instant, thinking, before saying, “Does it bother you if I ask you a favor?”

“Not at all.”

“I still have to cut up all the fruit, for after dinner.” She’d already made her way to the other side of the counter, where a pile of fruits sat in a large wooden bowl, which she pulled over so that it sat between them. “It’ll be twice as fast with an extra pair of hands.” She fished out two knives from a drawer and handed one of them to Angela, who grabbed the bright green apple closest to her in the bowl.

“Would you like them cut any particular way?”

“However it pleases you, Docteur.”

They set about chopping most of the fruit Amélie had on hand—catching up all the while on how the latest ballet season capped off, and on what new developments Overwatch had in the way of medical technology—and once that was finished, began arranging them on a large, heavy ceramic serving plate. Angela found herself paying attention to the movements of Amélie’s hands, to the shape of her fingers and how careful they were as they worked to obscure more and more of the plate with vibrant patches of chopped up fruit. Nearly everything about this woman seemed lithe. When she glanced up to look at her, she caught Amélie’s gaze for a moment. It flickered quickly back to where her hands were working.

“There,” she said as she filled in the last hole on the plate. “That’s everything.”

“Your particularity about the colors paid off,” Angela teased—she’d been so focused on laying out a particular gradient. “It looks nice.”

“It needs to be perfect,” Amélie said with a satisfied smile, and just a hint of defensiveness. “Presentation counts.” Angela laughed softly. She was tempted to point out all the colors would muddle the second someone took a serving spoon to the mix, but she held back the comment as she found herself admiring the arrangement again. “Don’t you think?”

“It does,” Angela admitted. They moved to the sink to wash their hands, and then Angela watched as Amélie dried hers off on the cloth hanging from the oven handle before making for the wedding ring she’d left just off to the side of the sink. She slipped it onto her finger.

“I’m not a very good host, I’ve been keeping you here all this time,” Amélie apologized as she turned back towards Angela. “Thank you.”

“I’m happy to help,” she assured her. “We still need to get everything outside, don’t we?”

Amélie nodded. “I’ll get it all ready—would you mind just checking if Gérard’s finished grilling everything?”

She didn’t mind. Angela headed back out the kitchen the way she came, through the living room and to the sliding door leading outside. Her place had a balcony, but it was nothing in size compared to the space offered by this apartment’s patio—testament to that was the fact that the group of them fit so easily around the table that had been set out at its center. Her entrance attracted more attention than she would have liked as they all greeted her.

“Angie, we thought you’d bailed.” Jesse was comfortably one beer in by the looks of it, and nursing a second. She’d hated that nickname the first time he’d used it, back when they’d met when she started working for Overwatch, but nowadays it somehow didn’t ring quite right to hear him call her anything else. She suspected he insisted on it initially, though, only because it succeeded in pulling a reaction from her.

“Just fashionably late,” she told him. “Gérard, Amélie wants to know if you’re all set out here.” He was already in the process of removing everything from the heat.

“Tell her her timing’s impeccable—I’ll be in in a few to help carry everything out.”

Angela backed out from the doorway without bothering to slide it shut behind her before returning to the kitchen—they were going to carry out plates in just a minute, anyways. She found Amélie reaching for a large pitcher off the topmost shelf of an open cupboard when she entered.

“Everything’s ready.”

“Perfect. Thank you, Angela,” Amélie said as she came down from her stretch victorious, pitcher hanging loosely from her fingers. She turned on the faucet, then, and let the water run for a few seconds until it grew cold before placing the pitcher beneath it. “Everything on the counter can go outside.”

“It smells amazing,” Angela commented as she appreciated the dishes set out before her. She didn’t turn to look at her, but she was certain Amélie was smiling at that. Oven baked vegetables in shades of red and green and yellow, a salad littered with fresh tomatoes, a pasta dish that she couldn’t name—and the gratin looked delicious. A perfect sheet of crisped up cheese and golden brown potato sat at the topmost layer of the baking dish. Angela reached to pick it up off the counter. “ _Scheisse!_ ”

The dish dropped violently onto granite again with an awful cracking sound. Not soon enough. Amélie’s head turned instantly to see what had happened. Angela felt her hands grow warm—the pain wasn’t biting yet but she knew it’d come—and shook them reflexively as she stepped away from the counter.

“Here, come here.” A note of urgency colored Amélie’s voice as she led her quickly towards the sink. Angela mumbled about it hurting at she let one of her hands be guided into the pitcher, now nearly full, that Amélie had set in the sink. The other, she held beneath the running water. “I’m sorry—I didn’t think. I just—I forgot, I pulled it out of the oven just now… I should have warned you. God, I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” Angela said quickly to cut off her rambling apology. She was too focused on the relief the water on her fingers offered to follow up with anything more than that.

“Wait just a second. I’m going to get Gérard to—I’ll be right back, alright?” She waited for a nod before stepping away, leaving her at the sink as she ran out to the patio. Angela could just barely make out the soft sound of Amélie’s voice over the running water as she spoke lowly in French to Gérard. Not a minute later the both of them entered the kitchen.

"If you're going to do away with one of us, _Chérie_ , at least spare the medic, hmm?“ he joked. “Hanging in there, Angela?”

“I think so,” she said.

 "Don’t worry about the food, I’ll take care of it.” He stole the oven mitts off where they’d been left to the side of the stove. 

“Here, let’s move to the bathroom.” Amélie’s hand fell to her shoulder, signaling for her to follow. Angela reluctantly pulled her hands from the soothing water and left the kitchen behind Amélie. “Gérard should have some stuff for burns in there.”

She plugged the sink and turned the cold water on for her once they reached the bathroom, and Angela immediately put her hands to it again. It was starting to sting strongly now. “I should keep it to the water for another few minutes…” she said, mostly to herself. She watched as Amélie knelt down to search about in the drawers beneath the sink just off to where she stood.

“It’s not too bad, is it?” she asked.

“No, I don’t think so,” Angela said as she examined her hands through the water. “I have a feeling the right hand might blister a bit, though.”

“I have… some _aloé véra_ ”—she said it in French—“and some antibiotic cream.”

“Perfect, we’ll use both.” Amélie set them both beside the sink as she stood up again. “Now I’m the one keeping you from everyone,” she said.

“Good, that makes us even.” Angela caught her smile for just a second before she disappeared behind her. She came back with a small white towel in hand. “Here, let’s see the damage.”

Angela lifted her hands from the water, and let Amélie slowly wrap the towel about them as she dabbed them dry. When she let them go again, they saw the pads of Angela’s fingers were starting to turn a bright shade of red—her thumbs, especially—and an angry line had formed along the side of her right index finger. She’d been right when she’d said it would blister.

“ _Tu t'es bien arrangée,”_ she mused.

“I’ve been through worse, but... this is so frustrating.” Angela frowned. “I won’t be able to work properly for a while.”

“It will heal soon.”

“Imagine—Imagine if you’d burned your feet,” she insisted, to illustrate the inconvenience of her predicament.

“I’d rather not, to be honest. But I see the point.”

“The _pointe_ , you might say.” It took Amélie a second—and she made a show of rolling her eyes in mock exasperation as soon as she got it, despite the small huff of laughter that escaped her lips.

“You’re lucky I find you charming, Docteur _._ ” Angela didn’t know what to say to that, didn’t trust herself to hold Amélie’s gaze too long, and so saved herself the trouble of digging herself into a hole by quietly turning her attention back to her hands, trying to curl and uncurl her fingers to test the pain. Amélie reached for the bottle of aloe she’d left beside them, and the sound of the cap twisting off prompted Angela to look up again.

“Sorry if it stings a little,” Amélie said. She ran quickly along each of Angela’s burned fingers with her own, her touch feather light so as not to put too much pressure against where her skin was raw. She repeated the process with the antibiotic ointment she’d also unearthed from the cabinet, and Angela watched her as she grew concentrated in the careful motions of it all. Because they hadn’t ever stood so close before, and because she hadn’t yet seen Amélie dressed down like she was today—just jeans and a t-shirt and minimal makeup—she found herself attentive to the smallest details of her that she couldn’t have caught on previous occasions. Her eyelashes were full and dark, the curve of her nose so specifically delicate, and the sharpness of her face shape offset by the softness of her lips and the way their corners curved subtly when she smiled. And then her eyes—always bright and expressive, even when she was concentrated as she was now.

“I feel quite special.” Amélie speaking broke Angela’s quiet studying at once. She sounded very pleased with herself. “Doctoring a doctor,” she elaborated.

“You’ve practically earned the title yourself,” Angela told her. Amélie finished applying the last of the ointment and released her hand gently before turning to wash her fingers off under the water. “Will you be sending a bill, then?”

“Seeing as I was partially responsible, this one’s free of charge,” Amélie answered with an acted seriousness that made her laugh. When she turned around to face Angela again, she was smiling that knowing smile that never failed to captivate something in her. “I hope all this has built up your appetite; I’m starving.”

“Mm,” she replied as she tentatively pressed her fingers together. The sticky ointment was already beginning to be absorbed away. “Let’s go eat.” They walked back out the bathroom, and Angela tried not to think too hard about what a nightmare it would be to even try to hold a fork at the moment.

* * *

 

By the end of the next week, the pain had receded quite a bit, though Angela still found herself delegating to other doctors and nurses on site more often than she did any work directly. She hated not being able to use her hands. The small portion of her index finger that had now blistered over was what gave her the most trouble, but she’d taken to applying gel to it and the rest of her fingers at least once a day, so she hoped the swelling would die down by next week. 

After changing the small bandage she’d wrapped around her finger, she looked to the face of the clock hanging above her desk for the time. Only half past noon and sleep debt was already catching up with her. She needed a coffee, but she’d depleted the last of her stash just this morning—which meant she’d have to make it to the lounge downstairs if she was going to get anything done over the next few hours. She left her office with the door ajar as she made for the stairs; they always saw less traffic than the elevators during regular hours.

The lounge was busy as usual, and she hardly paid mind to its occupants—Ana was sitting at one of the armchairs by the entrance, and was the only one she offered a quick wave to on her way in—as she beelined it for the coffee maker. She’d brought her biggest mug and intended on filling it to the brim. A voice suddenly cut through the rest of the noise in the lounge, and Angela was so surprised to hear it, she nearly jumped at the sound of it calling her name.

“Amélie,” she said when she looked up. That she was missing sleep and feeling the onset of a horrid headache didn’t help her look less dazed by the unexpected encounter. Gérard was close behind her, talking to a few agents she recognized from the Blackwatch division.

“You look surprised, Docteur.” That seemed to please her.

“I am,” she said simply, because her brain hadn’t quite caught up enough for her to say anything else. She smiled, though, now that the surprise was wearing off.

“Gérard is accompanying me back to Paris this afternoon,” Amélie told her. Angela’s smile faded just a bit. “We stopped by because he needed to pick up some things before going.”

“Already leaving?” She tried not to sound too disappointed, but she hadn’t seen Amélie since that night at the apartment. A small part of her had hoped they’d get to spend more time together. “It’s a shame you can’t stay in Zurich longer.”

Amélie was about to answer when Gérard suddenly cut in as he came up behind her. “Angela, hope the burn’s doing better.”

“It’s on the mend.”

“I didn’t mean to interrupt, but,” he paused to look at his watch, “we should be leaving soon, if we don’t want to hit bad traffic cutting through to Paris… _Les clefs, Chérie?_ ” Amélie fished a set of keys out of her bag and dropped them on his waiting palm. “I’ll get the car, meet me in five-ten minutes?”

“ _Merci_ ,” she told him softly as he started for the door.

“I’ll see you, Angela.”

She waved at him on his way out, and had little time left to add anything else in their parting before he disappeared completely. Amélie’s quiet laugh made her quickly turn back to look at her. “We’re really not in that big of a hurry,” she assured her, like she was confiding in her a great secret. There it was again—that quality in her voice that captivated Angela to an almost alarming degree. “Does it still hurt?” Amélie nodded towards Angela’s hands, specifically at the half of her finger that was bandaged now.

A lie rested at the ready at the tip of her tongue, but she caught herself, and pushed it down. “A bit, to be honest.”

“I’ll be back here in a week, more or less, you know,” Amélie suddenly told her. “Hopefully by then it will have healed.”

“Oh?” The look in Amélie’s eyes seemed to beg her to ask more, but Angela only waited for her to continue.

“I won’t be working until the fall—Gérard convinced me to move down here for the summer.” Amélie studied Angela as she told her the news, seemed to gage her reaction, looked for something.

“For the summer… as in, the next two, three months?” Angela could hear herself smiling in the way her voice escaped her. Amélie nodded.

“I’ll be seeing more of you soon, then, Docteur?”

“I do keep a busy schedule, but you can count on it.”

“Good,” Amélie smiled. She stole a glance at the watch on her wrist, and then met Angela’s eyes again. “ _Allez, on se fait la bise?_ ” The brief press of Amélie’s cheek to her own made her feel warm and awake in a way she was sure the coffee she’d come into the lounge for wouldn’t ever have.

She watched her leave and stood there for a second before remembering she still had a mountain of work to attend to upstairs. She took a sip from her mug and immediately her expression soured as she realized she’d forgotten to add in sugar, so she grabbed a couple packets off the table and tucked them into one of the pockets of her lab coat. It was when she turned that her eyes fell to Ana, where she still sat on the armchair by the door, holding in her lap a set of documents which she wasn’t paying any particular mind to at the moment. Angela suddenly had the sense that her gaze had been following her, the way it followed nearly everyone on base, she suspected, for quite a while now—maybe since she’d walked into the room. It seemed to say something to her in the moment before she looked away again. Angela thought, as she passed her by again on her way out, that she always seemed privy to everyone’s secrets, like they’d left them out for her to read no less easily than last month’s magazine forlorn on the lounge’s coffee table.  


	2. Chapter 2

Amélie returned to Gérard’s apartment after spending the larger part of the afternoon in the dance studio, the small one she’d found to her liking and had started paying regular visits to in the few days since she’d move to Zurich, and immediately took a warm shower. She hadn’t completely unpacked her things yet; her clothes still lay folded in the suitcase that sat by her side of the bed, beside the dresser. As she exited the bathroom, the cool air of the apartment hit her wet skin and raised goose bumps over her arms, prompting her to walk over a beat faster so she could dress herself. It was as she finished pulling a shirt over her head that her phone buzzed once, and then fell silent again.

Where had she left it? She dug through the pockets of the pants she’d left carelessly on the bedroom floor when she’d gotten undressed—nothing—and then rummaged through the bag she’d taken with her to the studio—more successful. She frowned as she read the message on the screen. Gérard’s sister was supposed to stop in Zurich on business for a couple of days, and they’d agreed to spend time together in the city. Travel hiccups, though, seemed to have different plans. She’d been looking forward to seeing another familiar face in a foreign city.

Without giving it a second thought, Amélie opened her messages with Gérard and scrolled back through them until she found the number he’d sent her, when she’d asked for it, about a week back. She filed it under a new contact, and after just a moment’s pause, pressed her thumb to the call button. She wasn’t even sure if it was a work number or a personal number, she realized, as she listened to the ringing tone. It had beeped too many times to count, now. Maybe she wouldn’t pick up—

“Ziegler,” she answered, finally, in unfiltered German, sounding just a bit like she might’ve run to catch the call.

“ _Salut, Docteur_ ,” she said softly, a bit unsure now—she wondered if Angela could hear it in her voice. “Did I catch you at a bad time?”

“Amélie?” She sounded only vaguely surprised. “No—I’m just… I’m at work, I was going to head home soon.”

“I can call you back later, if that’s better.”

“No,” Angela repeated quickly. “No, you’re fine.”

“Sorry if I surprised you—Gérard gave me your number, I thought I’d call.” Angela made no comment on that, so Amélie figured it must have been her personal number after all.

“Have you moved to Zurich, then?”

“Mm.” Amélie, sitting on the edge of the bed, leaned back so she was lying down and counted on her fingers, “… Four days ago, but I haven’t done much exploring yet. I thought a good local might have some recommendations.”

She could feel Angela thinking on the other end of the line, caught a small hum as she did so. “Well, I mean, it really depends what—”

“Something I can make a day of. And something I can’t do anywhere else.”

“It might be a bit touristy, but you can hike up the Uetliberg, if you like that sort of thing,” Angela suggested. “The view’s really amazing—you can see the city and the lake and the Alps, and the trails haven’t been too busy the times I’ve gone.” Amélie found herself smiling at the enthusiasm creeping into Angela’s voice. Only too easily did she imagine those bright blue eyes alight.

“That sounds perfect,” she said quickly. “And if it’s a workout, I won’t feel as bad if I end up skipping my practice routine over the weekend.” That had been when she’d intended on making plans with Gérard’s sister—Gérard would be working full hours on both days—but now she realized it hardly mattered, since she herself wasn’t working and didn’t have a proper schedule that needed sticking to. “Are you free, on the weekend?”

“On Saturday, I should be,” Angela thought aloud. “Assuming I don’t get called in last minute—which happens more often than I’d like, to be honest.”

“Would you like to go with me?”

A small pause, and then came Angela’s answer, “I would.” Amélie could hear the smile in her voice when she continued, “Would you like for me to go with you?”

“I would,” she repeated. “Or I wouldn’t have asked, Docteur.”

“I thought we were asking questions we already knew the answer to.” Amélie chuffed a small, barely-there laugh at that. “I’ll stop by and pick you up Saturday?”

“If that’s easiest.”

“Great.”

“Text me, if work does end up getting in the way.” She almost surprised herself in saying those words to Angela. How often she said them to Gérard, when she knew Blackwatch had big operations to see through. Checking in had almost become a habit. “You have my number now—saved you the trouble of asking for it.” Angela laughed again, not the easy, confident laugh from before, but something uncertain. Even after they hung up, Amélie found the light, clear tone of it playing back through her memory.

* * *

 

After Angela picked Amélie up from the apartment, they took a train out to the mountain, and though cable cars could have easily carried them up the rest of the way to a vantage point, decided to take a long trail up instead. Despite the tourists the summer season tended to bring, the path was, as Angela had promised, rather empty—the singing of unseen birds among trees and the soft crunching of pebbles beneath their feet were the only sounds to accompany them as they walked. The air smelled crisp up here, not sterile like medical labs, or lacquered like dance studios. 

“I’ve been dancing everyday since I got here,” she told Angela. “I know I’m on vacation, but it’s like I can’t make myself quit—I guess it doesn’t help that I don’t have much else to do here.”

“That’s not a bad thing, is it? To love what you do so much the thought of stopping never occurs.”

“See, you understand. What’s the expression… the one about birds…? _Qui se ressemble s’assemble._ ”

“Birds of a feather…”

“That’s the one!” She smiled as she remembered now.

“Don’t let me help justify your overworking yourself.”

“Gérard dotes enough to compensate.” Amélie laughed a little. “He understands, though, even when I come home some evenings and don’t feel like moving a muscle ever again.”

“I don’t know much about the industry, honestly,” Angela admitted. “Are the hours long?”

“Like any other job. Six days a week, usually. About seven, eight hours of dancing a day, sometimes more. And more still if there’s a show in the evening—but my schedule’s always predictable, which is nice. And then there’s the off season.”

“An off season that still has you practicing daily.”

“I was promoted to _étoile_ two years ago.” There was something just a little bit vain in the upturned corners of her lips and the look in her eyes. “Youngest in nearly half a century,” she added, for good measure. Angela thought she wore her pride well—it made her stand taller, made her glow. “I haven’t let myself fall out of practice since then, not even a little bit. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted. I can’t be in anything but top shape.”

It struck Angela, in that moment, how young Amélie seemed, with all her raw ambition and enthusiastic confidence. She wore it on her sleeve, and that she was otherwise so often indecipherable only made it all the more noticeable. Angela couldn’t help herself asking, “How old are you?” It only occurred to her after it’d been said that it might come off as rude.

Amélie did look surprised, for an instant. “Twenty-five.” She studied Angela for a reaction. “You thought I was older.” It wasn’t a question.

“No.” It wasn’t exactly a lie, since she truthfully hadn’t given it much thought. “You said you were promoted young—I was just curious.”

“And what about you, Docteur?” Amélie asked. “I was under the impression there was no cutting corners when it came to building a career in medicine. Yet you don’t look much older than I am.”

“Are you implying that I cheated my way in?” Angela raised an eyebrow at her in mock-offense. The amused lilt in her voice betrayed her.

“ _Non_.” Amélie smiled at her. “Simply that you are a rather exceptional person.” Angela flushed at the compliment despite herself.

“Maybe I’m really fifty years old—only I’ve found ways to stop myself aging,” she suggested. Amélie opened her mouth, on the verge of saying something, before quickly closing it and turning her gaze away. She looked like she was struggling to swallow down a particularly good joke. “I turn twenty-nine soon,” Angela finally provided. “I don’t think my work ethic was as orderly as yours when I was your age—I’m still a bit scattered, sometimes, to be honest.”

“I’m far from perfect,” Amélie told her quickly. “The past few days, actually… I feel like my routine’s been a little bit unfocused. Though, it always tends to be without an instructor.”

“And you’re in a new studio,” Angela pointed out. “Certainly the change in setting doesn’t help.”

“It is a bit lonely in there,” she admitted. “Not that I dance for the company, it’s just nice to be among familiar faces—and god, Angela, my German is terrible! I can hardly bring myself to speak to any of the girls in there.” Angela laughed, a good full laugh, at that.

“You, timid? Now I’m curious to see just how bad your German is.”

Amélie frowned. “See, they’ll laugh just like that as soon as I mispronounce something and accidentally say the word for ‘ass’ when I’m trying to talk about the weather.” That only made Angela laugh harder, and this time, Amélie couldn’t help but join along.

“You know, even in the German-speaking parts, most people speak French here. And if not that, then English.”

“How is your French then, Docteur?” she asked, latching on to an opportunity to shift the attention away from herself.

“Elementary.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“My _understanding_ is good,” she admitted. “But I promise my spoken is awful. I haven’t properly practiced in years.”

“I’ll tease it out of you one day, and be the judge myself.” Angela swore Amélie winked at her as she said it, but then, in an instant, she turned her head away, and now she thought she might have only imagined it.

She watched as Amélie lengthened her strides to walk just ahead of her, eager to make it up the last of the path to stand at the end of the lookout. She leaned up against the railing overlooking a sheer drop down onto the surrounding hills. Zurich sprawled out from the edges of the greenery and hugged the lake that seemed to reach towards the Alps across the way. Even in the summer, the range’s peaks were capped with white. “Beautiful,” Amélie said at the sight before her.

“Mm,” Angela agreed. “I’m ashamed to say I hardly ever come up here.”

“It’s so easy to get caught up in the little things when you’re stuck in the city bubble.” She turned from where she looked out at the mountains to face Angela. “You get busy and you forget the possibility of coming out here even exists.”

“It does feel lighter here. I think it’s the breadth of it—it lets you breathe. You realize you’re tiny, and then your problems and your stress seem a little bit smaller, too.”

“And are you stressed often, Docteur?” Amélie asked.

“I like to think I thrive on it. That, and good coffee.”

“Well, there's a new goal for me this summer.”

“What’s that?”

“To coax you out on as many anti-stress adventures as I can.”

“I’ve made the cut for personal guide to Zurich, then?” she joked.

“The educational commentary was a bit lacking, but I’ll let it slide.”

Amélie always had an answer to everything, and never in a way that made her difficult to talk to. The thought occurred to Angela, suddenly, that the odds of her becoming friends with Amélie—a woman belonging to a world that seemed so different from her own—might be quite slim in any universe even minutely different from this one. Most everyone she spent any significant amount of time with was a colleague. Amélie was refreshing, captivating, clever, and Angela was eager to drink in her presence.

“What has you looking so pleased?” The question pulled her out of her musing.

“Nothing,” she was quick to answer. The far off buildings of the city caught her focus, and she let them lead her to a new train of thought. “I was just remembering all the festivals Zurich has in the summer—I’ll have to take you.”

“What sorts of festivals?”

“All kinds. Dance, music, theatre, film—I love that one—and food.” Her voice lifted with a note of enthusiasm on that last word. “They set up the biggest markets, cooking workshops, and food truck lines you’ve ever seen. Enough wine and cheese tasting for a lifetime—and all the bakeries and desserts! What I’d do for that artisanal chocolate.”

“Do you have a sweet tooth, Docteur?” Her smile was teasing.

“Mostly for chocolate.”

“I can’t stomach anything but dark,” Amélie confessed. “Though I do like fondue.”

“I know a place; I’ll take you while you’re here.” She wondered if that sounded presumptuous, maybe. “If you’d like.” Maybe she would be better off telling her the name of the place, so she could go with Gérard one night.

“I’m getting hungry, actually. Speaking off food.” She turned to look back at the path they had come from—the walk back would take almost two hours. “It’s probably too late for fondue, but would you want to grab something, on our way back into the city?”

Angela said she would, and after appreciating the view for a little while longer, they started their walk back down the mountain. 

* * *

 

“I’m going to have to pick up Gérard soon.” By the time they reached her car, Angela was starving, but time wasn’t in their favor. The look of apology in Amélie’s eyes was genuine. “I should have told him to take his car in this morning." 

“That’s alright, we hadn’t planned on dinner or anything.”

“Next time,” Amelie said, and it sounded a bit like a question.

“Next time,” Angela confirmed.

The drive back to the apartment felt far too short, even though Angela took her time getting there. The sun had already begun to set when she parked in front of the building. Amélie reached for the door, paused with her fingers just around the handle, and turned to look at Angela.

“Thank you, tour guide Ziegler,” she said.

“Anytime.” She really did mean anytime—barring all the hours sucked to oblivion by her busy schedule.

“You saved my number, didn’t you? After I called?”

“I did.”

“Good.” Amélie smiled. “Call me next time you’re free, so we can have that dinner.”

“I will.” She knew she was awful at making plans that didn’t fall under medical appointments and research seminars and work meetings, but she also knew she’d try—knew she’d remember—for Amélie.

She stilled for an instant as Amélie leaned towards her to place a kiss on both her cheeks. Her hair still smelled like whatever shampoo or perfume she used, but now her skin—soft, where their cheeks brushed together—carried with it the smell of the woods and the fresh mountain air. Then, just as the warmth of Amélie started to draw away from her, Angela pulled her closer again with a gentle touch to her arm, to press their cheeks together for one last kiss.

“It’s three,” Angela said quietly after they’d slowly pulled apart. Amélie, for once, was stunned enough to be silent. “In Switzerland, it’s three.”

“It is, isn’t it?” she managed. “Excuse my poor manners up until now.” When she smiled, Angela smiled, too. She became aware of the hand she still had resting over her arm, and let it fall back as Amélie leaned away again to open the door.

" _À bientôt?_ ” she asked, pausing where she stood now on the sidewalk to look back at her.

“I promise.”


	3. Chapter 3

For all her experience navigating the maze that was Overwatch’s headquarters, Angela felt rather lost after entering the multileveled building of Amélie’s dance studio. She didn’t bother pulling out her phone again to check the directions she’d texted her—she was certain she remembered: right wing, third floor. The trouble was all the branching corridors. She was beginning to question whether she’d made it to the right wing after all, but then, mercifully, the room number she’d been searching for beckoned her from where it sat just above the very last doorframe down the hallway.

For an instant, she thought the room was empty. But then she saw her, sitting on the floor beneath the large awning windows lining the wall, one knee bent to her chest as she worked to take off her shoes. There was something picturesque in her silhouette, in the shape of her, as she sat there in the warm glow of the setting sun. A tranquil silence filled the room and Angela didn’t dare, or even think, to stir it. Amélie did so for her.

“You can come in. I won’t bite.” She raised her head up after slipping on her regular shoes again. Angela followed the line of her gaze and caught it with her own in the massive mirrored wall across from them. The sound of her voice, and the way her eyes smiled, broke the quiet’s spell and she stepped forward from where she’d been rooted at the threshold.

“I was hoping I’d catch you at it,” she admitted. Amélie stood and Angela had almost forgotten how tall she was. The cut of the shorts she wore over her tights made her legs look even longer than usual. Angela wondered for an instant if she’d been awkwardly lanky in her teens—she was willowy still now, even with the muscle she’d built from all her years of dancing—or if she’d always had an easy grace about her. She watched her bend to pick her bag up off the floor and lift the strap over her shoulder.

“I’m keeping you in suspense,” she said as she unwound her hair from the bun she’d tied it into, only to put it back up, more loosely this time. “Until the day you come see me perform in Paris.”

“Are you under the impression Overwatch offers reasonable off time?”

Amélie scoffed at that. “I have a good idea of your vacations… Or lack thereof.” The vague annoyance in her tone gave way to a smile, though, as she continued, “But never say never, Docteur.”

They made it out the building together in better time than Angela had managed to find her way up, and Amélie threw her bag into the back seat of Angela’s car once they’d reached where she’d parked it just outside the front doors. She opened the passenger side, then, to sit down, but found a bottle of wine had already claimed the seat.

“Here, we can move that in back,” Angela said as she got in from the other side, reaching over to steal the bottle from where she’d placed it. Amélie caught it before she could, and began inspecting the label as she took a seat.

“Is this for tonight?”

“No, I always keep a bottle in the car for my commute.” Amélie rolled her eyes and handed the bottle over now that she’d appraised it to her contentment. Angela fit it snuggly beside the bag now in the backseat.

“Thank you,” she said nonetheless.

“Of course.” It was only natural, after all, if Amélie was hosting. They’d originally meant to go out for dinner over the coming weekend, but Gérard had been called out last minute on some Blackwatch mission a border or two away from Switzerland. Amélie had been quick to call her, around midday, after the news came in.

“We were going to make a big dinner,” she’d said over the phone. “And I have everything I need to start cooking—are you free?”

She’d said yes, of course, even as she’d eyed the massive pile of reports on her desk. She hadn’t been scheduled for the afternoon, anyways; she could always catch up the next day. She’d leave headquarters, drive out to the dance studio to pick up Amélie, not without stopping to buy some wine on the way over, and then—

They made it to the apartment and Angela found herself killing time scanning the bookshelf in the living room after Amélie disappeared to change out of the clothes she’d practiced in. She returned five minutes later wearing sweatpants and a plain white shirt. There was something so surprisingly casual about the outfit, so warmly domestic, that in the novelty of it all, Angela couldn’t help her attention gravitating towards Amélie like a magnet. When it seemed her staring had been noticed, she quickly pretended to be captivated by some title or other on the bookshelf in front of her. The laugh that followed suggested the attempt at a cover might have been in vain.

“Come on,” Amélie said, amusement clear in her voice. Angela followed her into the kitchen. “I promise I won’t burn you this time.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” she protested.

“It was, a little bit.” And then, before Angela could answer again, went on, “Did it end up healing alright, by the way?”

Angela raised her hand to look at the mark that had been left behind in the wake of the accident, just along her index finger. “I’ll always have the scar—to immortalize the start of all this, I suppose.”

“And what’s _all this_ , now?” There was something in her tone that might have been teasing, but Angela remained unruffled.

“Our friendship,” she said simply.

* * *

 

The wine Angela had chosen ended up pairing well with the meal they cooked. They ate outside together, sitting at the table on the patio. The space looked so different now, occupied by just the two of them, compared to when she’d seen it a few weeks ago. The sun had set sometime when they’d been in the kitchen—a couple glasses of wine had been no help in keeping track of time—and now the zigzagging string lights overhead bathed them in a warm glow that made Amélie’s cheeks look redder than they probably were. Angela was sure her own were all flushed from the drink, too. They laughed together like they hadn’t yet before: louder, less bitten back, almost completely unreserved. It was the wine. She tried not to attribute the warmth she felt—when Amélie’s eyes danced whenever she made Angela laugh hard enough to try and cover it with the back of her hand, when she absently tucked the same stubborn strand of hair that had fallen away from her bun behind her ear for the third time in a single minute, when their hands brushed as they reached for the wine bottle at the same moment—to anything else.

“I have a question,” Amélie said once they’d finished their plates.

“Hmm?” She couldn’t prompt her for it properly since she was in the process of downing a glass of water.

“Well, I feel stupid asking because I’m certain I should know the answer.” She paused, eyes narrowing just a tad as she fixed Angela in her thinking. Her head rested in the hand she had propped up on the table. “But I don’t think you or Gérard ever mentioned it.”

“Mentioned what?” Angela asked. She was curious now.

“You are a surgeon, of course.”

“I am,” she confirmed. “Though I’ve spent a great deal of time in research, too, ever since joining Overwatch.” No more back-to-back surgeries everyday for hours on end like when she’d been head at the hospital here in Zurich. Though, some days still felt like that, when she served as combat medic.

“What is your… _specialisation_?” She hadn’t stopped long to consider the word in English—the wine made her care less, and she knew she’d be understood either way. Angela smiled.

“My specialty is in cardiothoracic surgery,” she told her. “And trauma surgery, too, I suppose. Especially given my job now. But I’m a cardiothoracic surgeon at the—well, at the heart of it, if you will.”

“Ah,” Amélie said with an air as though to suggest it made perfect sense. “And here I was going to guess neurosurgeon.”

“Interesting.”

“I know, a poor guess in hindsight…” she admitted. “I don’t know. You’re smart, you might have a bit of a god complex. I thought it fit for a second.”

“A god complex?” she repeated, eyebrows arching up in disbelief.

“Well, I mean, you’re a doctor. Saving lives, bringing people back from the brink of death. It has to feel a bit like playing god.” Angela was suddenly glad Amélie didn’t know a thing about the Valkyrie suit. Dressing an angel was grounds enough to tease her about a god complex for nearly an eternity. The thought alone was enough to make her cheeks flush darker than they already were.

“We’re not infallible miracle workers quite yet,” she said, purposefully modest.

“You’re a doctor of the heart, Angela,” Amélie told her. “The closest to come to medical miracles, no? To hold a dying heartbeat in your hands and watch it sing strong again by your care. It’s romantic.”

Angela smiled at that. “You might not think it so romantic if you sat in on an operation.” She remembered seeing her very first corpse during an anatomy course in university. Raising a scalpel to a human, even dead, had had more than a couple people in the class feeling sick. And seeing a living person’s heart beating in their chest had been something entirely different still. Perhaps Amélie was right, though—there was something undeniably romantic in the notion of tending to a dying heart. “Maybe I’ll invite you to sit in on a surgery, next time I do one,” she joked. “In exchange for inviting me to see you dance.”

Amélie immediately tried to visualize what Angela might look like at work—engrossed in a precarious operation, projecting nothing but professional calm and steeled focus even when something turned for the worst. It struck her suddenly that she had the privilege of being in the company of perhaps one of the greatest doctors in the world. She wondered if Angela herself had any idea of the number of people she’d saved at less that thirty years old, but she suspected the figure was far too great to even attempt counting. “You say that as though you wouldn’t be fascinating to watch work,” Amélie replied finally.

Angela almost swallowed her wine the wrong way at that, and cleared her throat to keep her composure. Amélie had this infuriating—infuriatingly alluring—way of phrasing things sometimes that had her at a loss for whether she’d meant for it to come out just so, or if something had been lost in translation. Whether or not she’d meant to imply her fascination hinged strictly on Angela—that she found _her_ fascinating—she couldn’t be sure.

Amélie’s eyes were on her, not particularly waiting for an answer, only searching. Angela almost told her, then, that she found her fascinating, too, but her sudden awareness of the number of drinks she’d had made her bite her tongue. She enjoyed Amélie’s company too much; she knew it. “I suppose it’s like a magic trick,” Angela said. “The novel fascination starts to wear off once you experience something enough.” The cautious part of Angela hoped the same principle would apply in her interactions with Amélie. Another, smaller part of her, which had emerged no thanks to the wine, hoped upon hope that it wouldn’t. She ignored it for the moment.

She was about to speak again, to change the topic, when she caught Amélie reaching for the now mostly empty bottle between them. There was enough left for about half a glass for each of them, and it seemed she was intent on finishing it.

“I shouldn’t,” Angela interrupted her before she could top off her glass.

“No?” Amélie was surprised at her refusal, but she set the bottle back down. She was quick to tease, “ _Tu tiens pas l’acool, Docteur?_ ”

Angela smiled. “No—some of us have to go to work in the morning, is all. And I have to drive home.” It’s not like half a glass more would have made much of a difference, but Amélie didn’t push the offer whatsoever. She poured herself the last glass.

“I’d cover your shift for you if I could.” She laughed at the thought of how lost she would be in Angela’s lab, reading papers filled with medical and scientific jargon.

“But then _you_ wouldn’t be able to drink, so the predicament’s just the same.”

“If you’re sober enough to logic through that, you’ll be just fine tomorrow morning,” Amélie assured her.

“I should probably head home soon, actually,” Angela told her. “If I want to feel like a person when I wake up.” She’d been up early that day—hadn’t expected to spend the evening and a good part of the night here with Amélie. She wouldn’t have traded it for anything else, but her sleep debt was catching up with her, as it so often did.

“Can you drive?” Amélie asked.

“I can. I’ll be careful.”

“Text me when you get home.” Hearing that meant more to Angela than Amélie knew. She wasn’t used to being checked in on—was only offered that sort of casual concern on occasion nowadays, and had missed it entirely when she was younger given her orphaning.

“Alright.”

They stood together and Angela helped bring the plates and glasses on the table back inside. She didn’t leave, either, until after they were done cleaning and putting away everything in the kitchen. It gave her time to down another glass of water, wait out the alcohol a bit, and more importantly, continue talking with Amélie. It was nearly midnight by the time she finally left the apartment, and about fifteen minutes later, she made sure to let Amélie know that she’d made the journey back home safely.


	4. Chapter 4

Angela had once expected total solitude from the late hours she spent overtime at headquarters—until Winston took to joining her in working all-nighters. The pitter-patter of his paws, always surprisingly quiet, she thought, for a gorilla easily two and a half times her weight; the hums and whirrs of his inventions; the clinking of tools and parts being put together: these were the sounds, audible from her office though they came from one of the labs at the other end of the hall, that now made up the white noise she worked to. The company was never unwelcome. She only wished his reason for losing sleep were different.

They had stopped properly counting the days since Lena’s disappearance. There had been months of radio silence, and then months more of whatever liminal state she found herself trapped in now. No one could make sense of it—Angela had tried, but applying biology to the problem of an intangible, interdimensional ghost had been predictably impossible—and still Winston refused to abandon hope of a solution.

Angela, working in the lab just beside her office, suddenly startled when the usual background noise of her colleague’s working was punctuated by the jarring slam of a door swung open too quickly. She almost lost her grip on the sample tubes she had gathered precariously in one hand.

“Now of all times…” she heard Winston from down the hall. He nearly ran right past the doorway, but stopped in his tracks when he saw her standing there. There was an uncharacteristic urgency in the look he gave her when he asked, “Butane torch. Is there one in here?”

“No, I—not a handheld one.”

“I need one now.” Winston was never typically so pressing or demanding, but something of a panic had settled over him.

“Check Lab 4,” she offered quickly. He was on his way again before she could even finish saying, “Winston, what happened?” She dropped what she’d been doing and ran out the door after him.

She collided straight into him at Lab 4’s entrance, but he caught her, with the hand that wasn’t holding the torch he’d just picked up, before she could be knocked over.

“Sorry,” he still took the time to apologize despite all his rushing.

“Winston if you need help—”

“I’ve got it this time, I’ve really got it,” he told her, more excited than urgent now that he’d gotten his hands on what he needed, as he kept on jogging down the hallway with Angela on his tail. “It just—It fell apart. I need to weld a piece back in place. But I think I’ve finally really got it!”

It wasn’t the first time that he’d been so hopeful of a prototype—the past couple of months, especially, had been filled with false alarms and near-successes. Angela made it a point to witness every attempt. She suspected that Winston needed the show of faith from someone, that it helped him continue with it in better spirits than if he felt alone in each failure.

“I got it!” he said, raising the butane torch in triumph as he stepped into his lab. Lena—or the ghost of her, rather—stood waiting at the center of the room, beside a desk with the latest model of the chronal harness sitting atop it.

“Great,” she said. Her eyes fell to Angela, then. “Hey, Doc. Thanks for joining again.”

“I can’t miss what’s bound to be one of the greatest scientific miracles of the century.” She smiled, and Lena tried to smile back, but something in it was empty. Angela hadn’t known her well before the accident, but in all their interactions, she had always seemed unwaveringly cheery. The chronal disassociation had changed that, steadily, over the course of months. Sometimes she was too distracted, by happenings and visions from other eras and timelines, to even hold a conversation, much less spare a smile.

“Don’t go anywhere,” Winston told her as he turned on the butane torch and began welding back together a side of the device that had fallen apart, no doubt just minutes ago during another test run.

“I’ll do my best.” She said it lightly, and maybe she’d grown used to it now, but it was still alarming whenever she was abruptly pulled away by time. Her disappearances could be measured in hours in the best of cases, and in months in the worst of them. Winston worked hastily, so desperate for her not to flicker away before he finished up the job that he hadn’t even bothered with safety goggles or gloves.

Lena and Angela observed in silence until he was finally done with it. “Alright,” he said. He slid the device across the stainless steel tabletop, as close to the bluish afterimage that was Lena as he could.

“I’m ready,” she said, looking to both of them. Winston nodded. They’d done this more times than they could keep track of. It felt familiar now.

“Three… two,” he counted, “…and one.”

The chronal harness powered on with a hum much softer than Angela expected given the previous models. Lena flickered once, twice—the way she usually did before disassociating. Angela saw hope start to fleet from Winston’s face just as she felt her stomach drop at the sight. But then, there was something they’d never seen before.

For an instant, Lena seemed to be made of nothing but light. It happened as quickly as a camera’s flash going off, and once it faded, the ghost of her had gone. Her body—flesh and blood, all in full color—filled its place instead. All three of them were left in a silence so still it seemed as though the world had stopped. Until enough time had passed to be sure it was real, that she wouldn't be pulled back. Lena breathed out a heavy sound of relief like she’d been holding onto it for years.

“I’m back,” she managed, looking down at her hands, closing them into fists and opening them again, then touching her face, her arms. When she raised her head to look at them, there were tears in her eyes.

Winston broke out laughing; he was choked up enough, though, that Angela thought it sounded a bit like he was crying, too. “It worked! I told you it would work! I told you!” He sounded almost as though he couldn’t believe it. Lena bridged the space between them in two steps to hug him as best she could, and the undeniable realness of feeling her in his arms washed away any disbelief.

“Don’t stay too far from it,” he told her, pulling away suddenly, worried. Lena looked to the device that had succeeded in tethering her back to this plane and stepped closer to where it sat on the table.

“Thank you,” she told him, and no expression of gratitude had ever sounded so sincere. “And thank you, Dr. Ziegler,” she added. “For always being here.”

Angela nodded and replied with a soft, “It’s good to have you with us again.” She surprised herself at hearing the emotion caught in her throat and tried to swallow it away.

“Really,” Lena insisted. “The both of you… Everyone else gave up. Understandably.”

“If they couldn’t see the possibility of a solution, it’s because they lacked the imagination for it,” Winston told her with a smile. This time, the smile she returned was genuine. But then it suddenly faded.

Within the span of a few seconds, Lena went white as a sheet. Her hand landed on the table to steady herself as her balance crumbled and her knees started to give under her weight. Angela rushed immediately to her side to help her to the ground before she could fall and hurt herself.

“What’s wrong?” Winston’s voice betrayed his panic. Lena looked too dazed to answer—if the question had even been meant for her.

“You’re just fine. Breathe,” Angela told her as she helped her lie down. “Hurting anywhere?”

“No,” Lena managed, though something in her expression still looked blank. She was trying not to pass out.

“Your adrenaline just spiked,” she told her. In reality there were a number of other unknown factors—she had no idea what sort of effects long-term chronal disassociation might have on the body—that could have been at play. But Lena looked exhausted and Angela didn’t want to put her through a medical exam just yet. “Let’s get you something to eat.”

Winston lifted the harness carefully from the table where it still sat humming, and brought it down closer to where Lena was lying on the floor. “Here, we can try to fit it on, so you can walk around.”

She sat up again and let Winston drop it over her shoulders, waited for him to fasten it. It was heavy, but surprisingly less clunky than she would have thought once it was on. She looked down at the soft blue light that came from the device, just at the center of her chest.

“I’ll make improvements to it for comfort,” he promised, realizing it probably wasn’t the most pleasant thing to wear. “Does it fit okay?”

“Just fine,” she assured him. Comfort was no price to pay for being able to properly exist again.

 

All three of them left Winston’s lab together to scavenge something to eat from one of the kitchens. Lena’s energy levels seemed to drop exponentially from that point on, and by the time she’d finished eating, she looked as though she might fall asleep right over her plate. She complained of a headache, and Angela went to find her some mild painkillers, though she suspected the best cure might lie in a good night’s sleep. 

“I’ll be staying here tonight; don’t be afraid to come get me if anything’s the matter,” she told Lena as she walked with her down the hall to the base’s sleeping quarters. They weren’t far from the medical wing and the science department, so she’d only be a short ways away.

“Thanks, Doc.”

Angela came to a stop in front of the door to her own designated room—she never used it, not when she had a comfortable couch in her office that let her stay close to her work and away from other people—and fished the key to it from her pocket. The lock clicked back and the door swung open before them.

“I’m sorry, it’s probably a bit stuffy. I never stay in here,” she apologized as Lena stepped closer to peek into the room.

“Don’t worry about it,” Lena told her. A pause, and then she added, quietly, “I didn’t even think I’d be back here… ever. Having a bed to sleep in is more than I could ask for.”

Angela put a hand to her shoulder. “We’ll ask Captain Amari to get you your own room tomorrow, so you can really settle in again.” Lena was quiet. “Things will get back to normal sooner than you know it.”

She nodded, then, to show she was listening. “I suppose I’ll have to call my parents in the morning, too… I don’t know how I’ll even start.” She was tired and overwhelmed, and Angela realized, when she turned again to face her, just how much she had given up hope for herself before tonight. It was almost as though Lena was more surprised by the turn of events than either she or Winston had been.

Angela hoped this—what Winston had achieved against all odds—might have her believing in the worth of optimism more from now on. She tried to remember exactly how old Lena was—eighteen, she thought. Her birthday had passed during the months she’d disappeared. She knew she would bounce back, even though she seemed too overwhelmed now to know what to do with herself.

“It’ll be fine,” she reassured her. There wasn’t much else to say.

It seemed the most natural thing to do when Angela held her arms open for Lena to fall into. Extending comfort physically hardly ever felt first nature to her, but that hardly mattered at the moment. She hugged Lena, because she knew it was needed. And she let her hold on for a long while, as long as she wanted, because she knew that was needed, too. She hadn’t known the warmth of another person for far too long now. She let her go easily when she felt her start to finally draw away.

Lena kept her head bowed, and Angela thought she might be crying until she looked up finally. Her eyes were wet, but she was smiling. “It’s gonna be fine,” she repeated Angela’s earlier statement, as though convincing herself of it might make all the things weighing on her mind a bit lighter. Angela smiled, too.

“Get some rest, alright? And come see me tomorrow.”

“Aye aye, Doc.” And there it was—the faintest note of that cheery tone she hadn’t heard from Lena in so long.

In time, things would be fine again.

* * *

 

Overwatch seemed to use anything and everything, sometimes, as an excuse for self-promotion. The truth of Lena’s accident hadn’t been publicized as anything but a missing person case, and now that she’d been ‘found’ again, the celebration of her return was to be married with a gala at the end of the month. Never mind that she hadn’t been hired by the organization for very long—she was young, she was vibrant, she was open, and all that made her a wonderful poster child, especially in light of the type of image Overwatch was desperate to maintain as of late.

Angela never particularly developed a taste for grandiose parties, but her presence was always a near necessity. As a doctor, as an advocate for peace among soldiers, and as a token figure of the organization—it looked good to have her there. But that still didn’t change the fact that she could never feel anything but unenthused before these events.

She looked through her closet for the few dresses she reserved precisely for these types of occasions. That they were hidden away at the very back was testament to the fact that she hardly ever touched them. The black and white one was probably the most appropriate for tonight; she slipped it from the hanger, put it on, and then observed herself in the mirror. The black skirt looked just a tad long as she was now, but with heels, she knew it would be the perfect length. She liked the cut of the slit that ran along its side—comfortable and airy, but crucially not immodest. The top half of the dress faded to white where it laced just a bit.

Were the event held at a different venue or different time of year, she might have been cold wearing it without a jacket. But the openness of the massive pavilion they’d rented out allowed the summer night air to set the most perfect temperature. The gardens surrounding it seemed to call to Angela the instant she arrived; it would be too easy to slip away from the party and wander its grounds instead. But there were hands to shake, introductions to make, and conversations to tolerate. She caught sight of Lena, whose condition had improved greatly in the span of such a short time already, near the bar at the other side of the room, and was glad someone new was around to steal some of the attention away. She looked rather in her element, unselfconscious about the chronal harness—improved by Winston already to look more streamlined and fit more comfortably—that she’d strapped over her suit, and talked easily to a group of women who had approached her.

The room was starting to fill up, and Angela knew it would be any second before she’d have to interact, too. Jack loved to rope her along this way and that to introduce her to some important figure or other. She cautiously kept her distance for the moment and scanned the area for other familiar faces. Jesse hadn’t arrived yet, but then she remembered that the probability of him not coming at all was reasonable, since he only ever attended about half of Overwatch’s formal events. She searched instead for others from the science department—until she was spared the effort when a welcome voice interrupted her train of thought.

“I thought I’d save you the trouble of walking to the bar.” Angela turned to see Fareeha standing at her side, one glass of champagne in each hand.

“Fareeha,” she smiled. She took the glass extended to her. The relief in her voice might have been too easy to hear, because Fareeha laughed. “I wasn’t expecting you here.”

She shrugged. “A last minute decision. I was in the area.”

It was no secret that tension had been brewing between her and her mother for years now—sometimes it seemed thick enough Angela thought she’d witness it boil over. It was almost cruel of Ana, she thought, to raise her alongside Overwatch, make a family of its members for her, only to deny her the right to join. She’d gone and joined the Egyptian Army when it became clear there’d be no talking her way around the situation—though from what Angela gathered, Ana had never wanted her anywhere near a gun regardless of who might put it in her hands—and had since risen quickly through the ranks. Angela was unsurprised. She’d always seemed more than cut out for it.

It was unclear whether she’d come against her mother’s wishes tonight, but Angela didn’t ask. She was glad to see her; it had been almost a year now. Her mental image of Fareeha used to often snag on time, but now, whenever they met after long periods apart, she’d stopped being surprised at finding she was a good few inches taller than her. The fit of the dress shirt she wore made her seem taller than usual, though.

“I’m glad,” Angela said. “Tell me how you’ve been.”

“So my mother can blame me for keeping you from properly interacting with everyone?” she joked.

She really did want to know, though, even if it was a nice excuse to avoid dreary conversation. “Catching up takes precedence over small talk, as far as I’m concerned.”

“It’s a bit quieter by the doors.” She nodded towards the large sets of them that remained open along the entirety of the far wall, giving onto a courtyard before the gardens. “Shall we?” Fareeha extended her arm in invitation.

Angela smiled at the deliberately gallant gesture. She took her arm and they walked together towards the fresher air, where less people were amassed. They found a space to lean against the half wall just outside, where they could talk while looking back into the room. That was when Angela recognized Gérard standing across the way, by the bar where she’d spotted Lena earlier. And sure enough, right beside him was Amélie.

She supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised at all by her being there, but she was nonetheless. She almost forgot how to think when Amélie looked up and caught her gaze, as though she’d somehow sensed Angela laying eyes on her. Amélie smiled subtly and she felt herself smiling back without necessarily willing it. They were too far apart for her to appreciate her in any amount of detail—but even from this distance, she found her striking.

Amélie looked away after only a few seconds, and Angela did, too, remembering to listen to Fareeha, who was still sitting beside her, talking about her past year in Egypt. But after that point, giving the conversation her undivided attention proved an effort. Frequently, she glanced back up to the floor to try and find Amélie again. She needed to say hi, at least, after she and Fareeha were done talking. But that plan was destroyed when Jack finally found them sitting outside.

“I promise, it’s just one guy,” he told her as he tried to coax her away. She must have looked particularly displeased for him to provide that reassurance.

It never ended up being “just one guy”, and she knew it. As soon as she talked to one, she would end up talking to another, and then another still until it became a rightful procession.

More than an hour later, and she still hadn’t managed to extricate herself from the suffocating social ecosystem that had blossomed on the pavilion floor. Every time she had the opportunity to zone out, she would start to search the crowd for Amélie again. And every time she found her, their eyes would meet before quickly moving away. It felt almost like a game and that made Angela giddy in a way she knew was unwise. Amélie was simply captivating—her mannerisms, the evident ease with which she spoke to everyone she met, the way the movements of her hands tipped Angela off, even from afar, to the precise tone of voice she was using. It was the thought of her that was getting her through this party, and she wanted so badly to go and speak with her instead of answer questions from the tenth United Nations representative she’d met that night. But this was her job. She reminded herself of that every time she felt herself grow distracted.

Inconveniently, it was when she was finally allotted time to herself that Amélie seemed to have completely vanished from the premises. She thought about wandering over to the other side of the room until she found her and Gérard, but the prospect of weaving between so many people, and the odds of her being stopped along the way to start a new wave of endless conversation, made her reconsider. A headache was starting to set in. She couldn’t wait for the night to end. Half a glass of champagne sat in her hand, and she downed it practically in one go before setting it down, empty, on a nearby table. If no one was about to provide her with an excuse for avoiding tedious conversations, then a trip to the bathroom surely would. It would be quiet, finally, with nothing but her thoughts to tend to.

There were two bathrooms on-site—the one by the main entrance, and a smaller one that she had spotted around the side of the building when she and Fareeha had been outside earlier. She made her way to the second, banking on it being less trafficked than the first. But it wasn’t empty when she walked in. She found she didn’t mind at all.

“Angela.” Their eyes met in the mirror and Amélie turned around, evidently both happy and surprised to see her. “Thank god—Can you give me a hand?”

“Sure,” she said automatically, shutting the door to the bathroom behind her.

“I shouldn’t have worn this dress. The zipper got stuck when I tried to pull it back up.” She turned her back to Angela to show her, but still looked to her over her shoulder.

“I’ll give it a shot,” she told her. It was a deep purple sleeveless dress with a long zipper down the back. The slider was stuck several inches from the top, just about midway. “How long have you been stuck here trying to fix it?” She tried not to sound amused.

“Only a few minutes. I’m getting frustrated, though.”

Angela felt Amélie’s eyes on her in the mirror as she paused for a second before closing the distance between them, so she could test the zipper herself. “Well, I’m glad I found you here. I wanted to come over to you earlier, but I couldn’t catch a breath.”

“I noticed,” Amélie told her.

“God, this thing is really stuck,” Angela said under her breath as she pulled harder at the zipper. She was scared she might break it further by being indelicate with it.

“I know.” She sounded fed up. “Can you imagine when this kind of thing happens with costumes during a performance?” she asked, thinking aloud. “I don’t know how the dressers do things so quickly…” Angela hummed either in acknowledgment or concentration as she continued trying her hand at it.

“Here, can you…” She stopped with the slider and moved up instead, to hold together the top end of the zipper. Her fingers brushed lightly against the skin just below the back of Amélie’s neck, and she swore she felt her shiver at the touch. “Just hold this for a second.”

Amélie did as instructed, and raised her arm to hold the ends in place for her. Angela’s other hand found the small of her back, where the zipper began, and together they held the teeth as straight and taut as possible. When she tugged at it this time, it budged just the slightest bit upwards—an improvement from before, at least.

“Did it work?”

“Not really,” Angela reported with something of a pout. “It can move back down this way, though… I’m going to try running it down and back up? Hopefully the teeth line up right that way.”

When she looked at Amélie’s face in the mirror again at that moment, the smile she found there was dangerous. “Are you trying to undress me, Docteur?” she teased. Angela quickly looked down again. She didn’t need to see her reflection to know that had made her blush. She tried to laugh it off, but her hands suddenly felt heavy where they held Amélie in place.

She slid the zipper down with only a bit of difficulty, and tried not to look distracted by the gentle curve of Amélie’s spine bared before her. Never mind that her fingertips were so close, that the urge to trace them up the softness of her back and the delicate shape of her shoulders felt so strong, that she wanted to make her shiver again just as she had only seconds ago. Never mind that she was undeniably more and more attracted to this woman, to her colleague’s wife, she reminded herself, every time they met. Her mouth felt dry.

With one last pull up against the slider, the dress finally fell properly shut again. Angela removed her hands and felt something like relief when she was able to step away. She could breathe again.

“There,” she told her with a smile. “Good as new.”

Amélie made a contented little sound at the news. “I don’t know what I’d have done without you.”

“Stayed stuck in the bathroom indefinitely.”

She rolled her eyes but turned around and said, “Thank you.” And then Amélie took the time, where she hadn’t up until now, with her back turned, to properly drink her in. Angela was starting to feel her heart beat faster, not sure what to say to spare herself, wanting to back away and stay close at the same time.

“Your hair looks nice up,” Amélie said matter-of-factly. “You clean up well.”

Angela made a sound close to a laugh as she looked down and away. “Implying I normally look a mess, right?” It wasn’t really a question meant to be answered, but Amélie did anyways.

“No, not at all,” she said quickly. “Maybe I misused the expression…”

“It’s alright,” Angela assured her. “I usually don’t really put forth much of an effort… Thankfully my job only requires I be averagely presentable most days.” There was a look on Amélie’s face now that Angela couldn’t read.

“Not very much effort is needed in your case,” she said, eyes smiling. But then her expression grew more serious as she studied her. Angela stayed silent, waiting, hushed under her gaze. Amélie’s eyebrows began to knit the slightest bit together when she spoke next. “Angela, I don’t think you know you’re very beautiful.” Like it was something so important, so pressing for her to be made aware of. Like she was offended she might think otherwise of herself.

Angela flushed, more than when Amélie had teased her about the dress, but she didn’t look away this time. She found her words instead. “Hearing that from someone so gorgeous makes it easy to believe, you know.”

She wanted to kick herself for saying it as soon as it fell to the space between them. But then Amélie flushed—the softest pink, high in her cheeks—and the delight Angela felt at having had an effect on her only made her want to kick herself twice as hard. It still didn’t stop her from daring to smile. Amélie laughed a soft laugh as her surprise faded away.

“Good,” she said, finally. She cleared her throat, then, and looked around like she was just realizing they were still standing in a bathroom together. “I should… probably head back out.”

“I should, too.”

Amélie raised an eyebrow. “Did you only come in here to appreciate the facilities?”

“I was… escaping,” she explained. “The politics of these events aren’t really my thing.”

“Sounds like another drink might help get you through the rest of the night.” Amélie stepped forward, coming close to Angela as she reached for the door. She swung it open and held it there. “After you.”

They returned to the bar together, and Angela was happy to find that both Amélie’s height and the way she carried herself had much of the crowd parting before them easily—no bumping into people and falling into another trap of tedious interaction. By the time they’d grabbed new drinks, Gérard had found them. He ordered himself something from the bar, too, and the three of them together managed to look busy enough talking amongst themselves to mitigate interruptions.

It was a near perfect way to see the night come to an end—spending it in the company of two people she got along with so well. Except every time she caught herself too captivated by Amélie—because there was no denying it now, this fascinated crush that had been growing in the space between her ribs for weeks—a dreadful weight sat on her chest. It grew so heavy with Gérard beside them. Of course he didn’t notice, but his presence was enough to remind her of her stupidity in all this. It made her feel guilty and foolish all at once, to suddenly remember him—to remember how completely unavailable Amélie was despite all their flirting—whenever Amélie’s voice, Amélie’s smile, Amélie’s eyes, made her feel that heady feeling that always left her wanting more. She was driving herself down a rabbit hole with all this wanting she knew would lead to nowhere. And the worst part was this: she didn’t even care to claw her way back up before she fell too far. Because it was fun, because she couldn’t help it, because more than anything, she didn’t want to stop being with Amélie, even if only like this. The way her greed settled in her stomach, on top of the alcohol already there, made her feel starving and nauseous all at once. 

Angela stayed with them as long as she could bear the feeling, but ended up leaving the party early, anyways.


	5. Chapter 5

“Captain Lacroix!”

A young soldier burst through the doors Gérard had emerged from just a minute ago. Amélie knew they led to the wing reserved for the Blackwatch division, and that she wasn’t allowed past them.

“Sorry to interrupt, Sir.”

“What is it, Meier?” He hoped whatever it was wouldn’t take too long—his shift had ended almost a half-hour ago.

“A message from Commander Reyes, Sir. It’s an emergency.”

“Alright, I’m listening.”

There was a moment of silence before Meier’s gaze flickered over to Amélie. She resisted the overwhelming urge to roll her eyes.

_“C’est bon, Chéri. Vas-y_ ,” she told him quietly, one hand reaching up to touch his arm. Somehow she’d succeeded at not sounding annoyed. Gérard looked to her and then back to the waiting soldier.

“Alright, I’ll be right there, Meier—just give me a second.”

“Sir.”

He went back in through the door he had come from, leaving them alone together for a moment.

“I’m sorry.” His apology was immediate and heartfelt. She knew better than anyone that this sort of thing bothered him just as much as it bothered her, but she still couldn’t help her aggravation. And he knew all her expressions and reactions by heart, so she knew there was no hiding how she was feeling from him.

“I know,” she said. “It’s alright, just text me when you have some idea of when you might be coming home.”

“As soon as I can, I promise.”

“Be safe.”

“I will be.”

He held her face in his hands for a moment as he leaned in to kiss her, brushed her cheek as they separated.

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you, too.”

And then her hands fell away from where she held him so that he could go. She watched him disappear through the doors she was barred entry to, and stood there a while longer, zoning out into blank space.

She had a fairly good mental map of the couple of floors she navigated whenever she came to see Gérard, but her knowledge of the base’s layout was otherwise limited. It was for this reason that she only entertained the idea of paying Angela a visit for so long—she wouldn’t even know what floor to begin searching on. But an opportunity to find out presented itself when she bumped into a familiar face just further down the hall.

“Captain Amari,” she said in greeting. “Can I bother you for a second?”

Ana came to a halt and smiled, though Amélie wasn’t sure if it was out of politeness, or if she was genuinely glad to help. She had only met her a couple of times, not enough to be able to read her in any measure.

“Amélie, good to see you again,” she said quickly. “Want me to pull Gérard out of there for you?” She nodded in the general direction of Blackwatch’s wing. “He’s usually off by now.”

“No, I—he got called back in just now, actually.”

“Ah, I see,” Ana said, voice dropping to convey her sympathy.

“I was hoping you could point me towards medical?” It was tentative, more of a question than a request. “If I’m allowed there.”

Ana looked at her a short while, studying her, thinking about something, before she answered. “Take the elevator; the science department is two floors up. This time of day, you shouldn’t need an ID to get that far.” She paused, and then, “First right, then a left. Ziegler’s office is the fifth door down.”

“Thank you,” Amélie said, surprised at how easily the information had fallen into her lap without her having asked much. How Ana knew who she'd been looking for, she wasn’t sure, but she didn’t question it.

“Always happy to be of help.”

Without much more in way of parting, Ana continued on wherever she’d been off to before she’d been interrupted. Amélie made for the elevators, and, just as instructed, hit the button that would take her two floors up. As soon as the doors opened, she knew she’d made it to the right place. The air smelled different here, more sterile than the usual clean office smell everywhere else on base. The halls were mostly empty but for a couple people that she didn’t recognize, both wearing lab coats. Most of the doors were shut, but she couldn’t help herself looking into the rooms that were open—labs and offices full of samples and vials and bottles, all labeled with different tags and colors, and microscopes and beakers and burners decorating desks and shelves and cabinets.

Angela’s door—the fifth one down the hallway—was open, too; she could see it just a ways away now as she turned the corner. But she slowed at the sound of voices coming from inside the room. They weren’t loud enough for her to make out any bit of the conversation properly, but whatever was under discussion had gotten Angela somewhat agitated. She could tell just by her tone, muffled as it was from where she stood. She didn’t recognize the other voice, though; it was lower, harder to pick up on.

Feeling awkward loitering in the hall, and not wanting to eavesdrop any longer, Amélie figured it best to make her presence known sooner rather than later. There was no point in delaying an inevitable interruption—besides, the door was open. Angela would have shut it, were it an important meeting. She stepped forward the last bit of the way, and stopped right at the entrance.

Angela was leaning against the edge of a table near the center of the room. Her back was to her; she was facing a woman Amélie didn’t recognize, though she only knew so many people in Overwatch to begin with.

Something charged was in the air. The way the two of them stood, tense but rather too close together, told her that if the conversation hadn’t yet turned to argument, then it was certainly on its way there. Amélie thought about back tracking out of the office as discretely as possible, but it was too late.

The woman speaking to Angela stopped talking mid-sentence as soon as she made eye contact with Amélie. Angela turned around quickly to follow her gaze. She looked more surprised than happy to see her at that instant. Amélie decided this was much more awkward than if she’d chosen to wait a while in the hallway, or tried to come back at a different time. But what was done was done.

“Amélie,” Angela said as she saw her, stepping away from where she stood by the table.

“I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to interrupt,” she apologized. “I just thought I’d say hi, but we can catch up later.” Her hand was resting on the doorframe, and she was getting ready to step out again.

“No,” Angela said quickly. She put more distance between herself and her colleague as she continued speaking to Amélie. “You’re not interrupting. Come in.” Her tone was hard to read, but Amélie wasn’t about to argue over it and make the situation even more uncomfortable. She walked properly into the room now, closer to both the women already occupying it.

The slightest moment of silence went by before Angela introduced them to each other—seemingly reluctantly. “Moira, Amélie Lacroix. Amélie, this is my colleague, Moira O’deorain.”

They stood close enough now, unobstructed, for Amélie to get a proper look at her. Lots of things stood out about Moira: how tall she was, easily a head above Angela; the color of her hair, bright and warm; her emotive, mismatching eyes; her sharp cheekbones. She was attractive in an interesting sort of way. But her general aura could only be described as unwelcoming—perhaps because she stood right beside Angela for comparison at the moment, and the two of them could not have been more different. Amélie always found the doctor had a warm, soft, inviting air about her. The look Moira gave her was arresting in a distant sort of way.

“Ah, Gérard’s wife,” Moira spoke. “A pleasure to finally be acquainted.”

Gérard had never mentioned her before, but she inferred they must at least work together on occasion if she knew of her. Moira extended her hand, and Amélie took it in her own. She almost startled when their skin touched together. Her fingers, spidery like the rest of her, were unnaturally cold.

“Nice to meet you, too.” The lab coat let her venture a guess at her title, “Doctor O’deorain.” Moira smiled. Angela looked like she was exercising massive self-restraint in remaining silent.

“Please, call me Moira.”

Amélie nodded with a small smile of her own. She was glad when their hands fell away from each other. Her eyes found Angela; it was easy to tell she was starting to get impatient.

“I’m sorry again for the interruption,” she said to the both of them.

“That’s alright, dear,” Moira was quick to answer. “I was on my way out, anyways. Always much work to be done.” That last bit was evidently aimed at Angela, but she didn’t say anything in response. The silence between the three of them felt heavier and heavier with every step Moira took towards the door.

She stopped once she reached it, turned around where she stood, looked at Angela, and asked, “Would you like the door shut, Doctor?” Something about it obviously meant to instigate. Angela didn’t rise to the bait.

“Just leave it as you found it,” she said civilly.

Moira smiled.

“Amélie,” she said, with the slightest inclination of her head, in way of goodbye. “I’ll be seeing you, Angela.” And with that, Moira took her leave, disappearing down the hall the same way Amélie had come just minutes ago.

She left in her wake a quiet lasting a good few seconds that Amélie didn’t dare cut into. Angela seemed distracted even when she finally spoke again.

“Here, come sit, if you want,” she told her, turning towards her and motioning to the couch just a ways off. She then moved to the front of the room to close the door to her office herself, despite having told Moira not to.

“You’re upset,” Amélie said, and it sounded a bit like a question. Angela walked back to meet her at the couch.

“Hardly,” she insisted. “It’s just… work stuff. I’m glad you came in when you did.” She sat down beside her and tried to let herself unwind. Her shoulders slackened a little as she breathed the smallest sigh. “What about you?” she asked, turning to look properly at Amélie. Her eyes were soft. “Did something happen? I wasn’t expecting to see you today.”

“Nothing,” she started, but then corrected herself, “Well, basically nothing.” She played absentmindedly with her hands in her lap as Angela watched her. “I was supposed to be with Gérard, but he just… left when we were about to go. Called in for backup, I think. I have no idea where.” Angela frowned.

“I’m sorry.”

Amélie sighed. “It’s alright. It’s pretty normal.”

“Does that add to the problem?”

“It’s not really a problem.” A ‘problem’ seemed to imply she was unhappy; but on the whole, she was sure she was quite happy. “I mean, I get busy with work, too, so I understand… I don’t know. I’m not upset, but I can’t help but get…” She paused, searching for the right word. “…disappointed, sometimes.”

Angela hummed. She wasn’t used to seeing this side of things, but this sort of situation wasn’t foreign to her—it had been a while since she’d had any semblance of a normal relationship precisely because of her odd work hours. Prioritizing work over her love life was, more often that not, not well received. But she knew Amélie was different, too, that she did understand the importance of a career, and that she would never leave Gérard or even berate him for it. That didn’t mean being let down was easy, though.

“My own hours are horrendous, sometimes,” she started. “But I know that those in… Gérard’s division get the worst of it. It seems there’s little room for transparency among them, even when it comes to figuring out a schedule.”

“Blackwatch,” Amélie said. It wasn’t a question.

“Sorry,” Angela said quickly. “I can’t keep track of who’s allowed to know or not.”

“Honestly, I’m not sure if I should know… But I’m glad I do. Gérard’s as honest with me as he can be. That’s something I really appreciate.”

“That’s good. You have the right to know. Besides, you’re smart enough not to say anything to anyone.”

“It’s not like I could say very much even if I wanted to. I don’t really know what they do, if anyone were to ask me in detail,” she admitted. “Just enough to have an idea. But I think that might be for the best.”

Angela agreed—more knowledge meant she might be targeted more easily. Even her presence on base was risky; Overwatch usually liked to keep the number of civilians passing through to a minimum for that very reason. It was simply better not to know, in some situations.

“You don’t work in Blackwatch, do you?” Amélie asked.

Angela laughed. “No. No, I don’t.”

“Why not?” She hadn’t thought the idea farfetched, but Angela’s reaction seemed to suggest it was. “I know the missions are dangerous. I thought maybe they would want their best medic around.”

“It doesn’t quite work like that,” Angela told her. “…It’s complicated.” Amélie was quiet, and the way she looked at Angela told her she was waiting for her to continue, to explain. Something about her was intense when she grew curious. So Angela went on, “You could say Blackwatch and I don’t exactly see eye to eye… And I’ll admit there are already enough things I disagree on within Overwatch proper.”

“What sort of things?” she was quick to ask. Her eyes tried to read something in Angela’s, and then she took a guess, “You don’t like working for soldiers?”

“Well, that’s the obvious one… More frustrating are their uses and extensions of the research done here, though. I feel like I’m always… fighting for something I should by no means be fighting for.” She considered for a moment what to say next. “…And whatever Overwatch does that I dislike, Blackwatch seems to do ten times better.”

When she didn’t elaborate any more, a pause settled between them, and with it, a thought burgeoned in Amélie’s head. Not wanting to strike a nerve, but incredibly curious at the same time, she started somewhat hesitantly, “That woman, Moira.”

The look Angela gave her was enough of a prompt to assure her it was alright to continue.

“Is she from Blackwatch?”

Amélie’s quick intuition, her being so observant, made Angela smile. She sighed. “Yeah, she is.” That was all there was to say about it.

“I didn’t mean to pry so much,” Amélie said. “It’s rather therapeutic to hear someone else complain about Overwatch and Blackwatch, though.”

“It’s not prying,” Angela assured her. “And you can vent to me whenever you need to. I’ll always listen.” She leaned the slightest bit closer to Amélie, close as they were already, just to nudge their shoulders together. That made Amélie smile, and she pushed back gently before Angela could lean away again.  

“Thanks,” she said. And then her hand found Angela’s knee, close to her own, and she let it rest there lightly.

The touch was warm. Angela felt her heart in her throat when their eyes met again. Amélie was close enough for her to smell the faintest traces of her perfume, to notice the pretty detailed patterns etched in the deep color of her irises, to let her eyes linger perhaps too long on the soft curve of her mouth. Close enough to kiss. Her hand was still against her thigh, silently holding her in place, gentle as it was.

“Anytime,” Angela managed. She moved slowly, daring to take Amélie’s hand in hers, but only long enough to shift it away from her lap. She stood up, then, now that she’d disentangled herself. “You know what?” she asked.

“What?”

“I know a great place that I think you’ll like,” she told her. “It’s a tapas bar near here; kind of a hole in the wall. They have good drinks, too. Let me take you. I think we could both use a healthy distraction.”

“Today?”

“Tonight,” Angela corrected. She looked at her watch. “I get off around six.”

Amélie stood up from the couch, too. She didn’t want to cut into her day of work more than she already had—she’d really only wanted to come by to say hello. But she was happy things had turned out this way.

“What time is it now?”

“A quarter past three.”

“Three whole hours until I have you all to myself…” There was mock-hurt in Amélie’s voice. Her eyes were smiling. Once again, Angela was left to wonder over what sort of suggestion might have been intended or not.

“Cruel to be starved of such lovely company, I know,” Angela joked. “But I’m sure you’ll live.”

“A very reassuring _pronostic_ , Docteur.”

Angela laughed—not her real, full laugh that only tended to come out after a drink or two, Amelie had noticed—but a soft laugh caught on a huff. She found it almost just as charming.

“Where do you want to meet?” she asked her.

“I can stop by your place after work,” Angela said. “If you’ll be home.”

“It’s a date.”

At several points throughout the evening, Angela almost could convince herself that their dinner together was in fact a date.

When she went to pick up Amélie, she found she’d put on a new change of clothes—not formal by any stretch of the imagination, but undoubtedly nicer than what she’d had on before. She felt bad for a second, just showing up in what she’d worn under her lab coat all day. At least it wasn’t anything Overwatch issue. But then Amélie told her she liked the fit of her shirt, and she was glad she hadn’t put on anything else.

When they sat at the table, they leaned over it to talk—always close. Three times their knees brushed together, and after the third time, they gave up on trying to force space back between them. They were halfway through the bottle of wine they’d ordered. Their food came, and they ended up sharing all the plates between themselves.

When they were done eating, Angela discovered Amélie had something of a passion for literature. That, had she not pursued dance at such an early age, she might have liked to do something in writing or education. The way she spoke about it made it feel like something intimate to be disclosing. Even more intimate was the way she reached, from time to time, for Angela’s hand where it rested on the table, whenever she grew passionate about something. And Angela let her—let the tips of their fingers slot loosely between each other. It made her heart beat faster every time Amélie linked them, just for an instant, closer together. It made her wonder if she made Amélie’s heart race, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tfw you have to introduce the married woman you're crushing on to your morally gray ex


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait on this update! I've been busy with finals.

Some days Angela returned from the battlefield with the phantom feeling of blood coating her hands. Hot and slick—always so hard to wash off after it dried dark between the lines of her palms and stained the underside of her fingernails brown. When she fixated too hard on scrubbing her failure off her skin, her fingers came out from the water raw and red, and stung her long after still. The pain was good, she thought, because she deserved it. And the distraction it provided from remembering the faces of soldiers who had died on her watch let her function.

She stripped out of the Valkyrie suit’s underwear and held it up for inspection. She was glad she’d chosen for it to be black; the stains would have been a nightmare to try and wash out had it been white. How blood managed to get past her uniform and armor was beyond her. She threw the slip into her bag—she’d take it home to wash—and then changed into a fresh set of clothes. The smell of clean laundry replacing that of dirt and gore was heaven sent.

There were two things she wanted desperately: a warm shower, and a long night’s sleep, though she’d probably have to help the latter along with a good dose of hypnotics. After managing not to be stopped by anyone on her way out of headquarters, she found her car in the parking lot, climbed into the front seat, and started the ignition. The familiar motions of driving tended to put her at ease. They made her mind go happily blank. It was why she only realized she was going in the entirely wrong direction when she was already halfway home. She’d completely forgotten—she’d told Amélie they’d meet for dinner this evening.

Her foot hit the brake a bit too hard at the next red light, and she took a second to remap a route in her head that would take her to the apartment. Her hand found her phone where it rested in one of the cup holders and she considered sending a text to cancel their plans. She wanted to go home. She wanted to see Amélie, too. She decided the day might only be redeemed if she ended it in good company. The thought of Amélie’s voice lifted the smallest weight off her soul; she loved the sound of it, the clear quality and soft shape of her words. She turned at the light to circle back around the block, driving further again from home.

With her brain set on autopilot, she found she could hardly recall the drive to the apartment by the time she made it onto its front steps. She pressed her finger to the doorbell and finally woke herself from her stupor when Gérard answered it to invite her in.

“You look like you could use a drink, Ziegler,” he told her after she’d stepped inside.

“It shows, does it?”

“I heard about the mission today,” he explained. “Jack said it was the worst he’s had in a while.”

Angela sighed. “I’ve certainly had better days on the field.”

“You’ll forget this one ever happened soon enough, I promise.” His hand fell over her shoulder. “Don’t be too hard on yourself, Angela.” Already knowing what plagued her.

She nodded, and tried to make it look convinced.

“How long are you going to keep the good doctor standing by the door, _Chéri_?” The interruption had them both looking over at where Amélie had just emerged from down the hallway. Angela couldn’t help the reflex that was to smile immediately as she saw her, as she caught her eyes.

“Don’t worry, she’s all yours now,” he joked. He stepped back to reach for a jacket he’d left on the coatrack and tucked it over his arm. “Take it easy tonight, ladies.” Angela was certain the comment was for her benefit.

“Where are you off to?” she asked.

“Drinks with the boys,” Amélie answered, close to them now. Gérard laughed.

“Don’t say it like that.”

“Like what?” She was smiling.

He rolled his eyes.

“Come, Angela,” Amélie told her, still carrying a note of amusement in her voice. “Let me get you some water.”

They left Gérard by the door to lace up his shoes, and Amélie led her into the kitchen. She took a tall glass of water from her hands and drank it nearly all in one go, not caring much if it made her look undignified. She hadn’t realized how much she’d needed it, how little time she had spent properly taking care of herself since she got back from the mission.

“I’m heading out,” Gérard called from outside the room.

“I’ll be right back,” Amélie told her as she left to meet him.

Angela took a seat at the small kitchen table, thankful to be off her feet again. She heard them talking by the door, but their voices were too soft and their French too fast for her to pick up any more than a few words interspersed. The door unlocked with a click that she could hear even from where she sat, and then it was quiet before the smallest sound of them pulling apart from a kiss. Angela had never thought herself a jealous person, but no word was better attributed to the feeling that seized her chest at that moment.

When Amélie came back into the room after seeing Gérard out, she met Angela at the table, and half-sat, half-stood against the side of it.

“I know we said we’d go out,” she started. “But why don’t we stay in tonight?”

Nothing could have sounded better to Angela, but she asked, anyways, “Did Gérard just tell you to look after me?”

“Sort of,” she admitted. “But I didn’t need him telling me to realize you need some quiet right now.”

She laughed. “Do I look that bad?”

“Just a little bit exhausted, that’s all.”

Angela leaned over the table with her elbows to its surface, and held her forehead against her hands. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I almost forgot to come here, honestly. I was so tired, I was halfway home before I remembered.” 

“You didn’t have to come.”

“I know, but I wanted to.” She cleared her throat. “I wanted to see you.” Part of her wondered if it was also her not wanting to be alone, her wanting to have someone to come home to. Amélie’s hand fell softly over her own, pulled it gently away from her face so that she could look at her. She held it there, against the table, and Angela watched her thumb stroke over her knuckles.

“Have you taken care of yourself?”

“A little.”

“You can take a shower here, if you’d like.”

“A polite way to tell me I smell like a battlefield,” she joked.

Amélie answered quickly, seriously, “No. I’m only suggesting it because it would help you… _Ça t'aidera à te détendre_.”

“Hmm.” It certainly would help her relax. She could feel how wound up her shoulders were still, and knew that hot water would help wash that tension away.

“A bath would be even better, actually,” Amélie thought aloud.

“I don’t want to impose.”

“You’re not imposing.”

“… A bath does sound nice,” she admitted after a pause.

Amélie’s hand slipped from her own and she said, “I’ll go draw one for you.”

Angela was sure embarrassment over being so out of it would catch up with her by morning, when she wasn’t so tired she could hardly think for herself. For the moment, she sat at the table, playing with the glass she’d drained earlier, staring at the way it caught the light as she grew lost in thought.

Amélie’s hand between her shoulders startled her softly from her thinking some time later, though she couldn’t tell how long exactly. “I left a towel out for you, next to the sink,” she told her. 

“Thanks, Amélie.”

She’d been inside the bathroom before, but something about it felt foreign to her now that the mirror was all steamed over and the bath drawn. She closed the door behind her and stripped out of her clothes. They fell to the ground and she left them there in a neat pile. The water, so still just a second ago, stirred and rippled when she dipped first one foot in, then another. It was just a bit too hot, but she sank down quickly into it regardless. And then she breathed. Deeply and slowly, she let the steam rising off the surface flow into her lungs and then out again. Her back unwound and her shoulders loosened with every repetition. She let herself lean back against the wall of the tub until the water was up to her shoulders. It wet the ends of her hair, so then she thought she may as well get the rest of it wet, too, and dunked her head in. She stayed under the water for as long as she could manage, until her lungs ached. Air burst from her lips in clouds of bubbles before she broke the surface again.

Everything was so still, so quiet. The water lapping against the edge of the tub seemed the loudest sound in the world. She leaned back and waited for the waves to disappear again, and then she closed her eyes, appreciating the silence.

A soft knock at the door stirred her a while later. On reflex, she sat up at the sudden noise, but settled down again quickly. “Still alive in there?” Amélie’s voice came from the other side.

Angela looked down at her hands through the water to find the pads of her fingers all pale and wrinkled. She hadn’t realized she’d been sitting there for so long. “No, I fell asleep and drowned hours ago.”

She could imagine Amélie rolling her eyes, or smiling, maybe. “And now _I_ have to dispose of the body? Considerate.”

Angela huffed a small laugh, probably too quiet for Amélie to hear. “I’ll be out soon,” she said.

“Take your time. I was just checking.”

She could just barely make out the sound of her footsteps retreating, and then it was quiet again. The clock sitting by the sink told her it was half past seven; she wished she’d bothered to look at it before getting in, because she had no idea how long she’d been sitting in the water, which was now tepid at best. She still wanted to wash her hair, at least, before getting out. An array of bottles—soaps, conditioners, scrubs and exfoliants, shaving creams—lined one side of the tub’s deck. She picked out the shampoo among them, clicked the cap open, and smelled it before pouring out a generous dose into her hand. Mild, herbal, vaguely floral—the same smell she caught on Amélie, whenever she leaned in close to kiss her cheek. She lathered it through her hair and rinsed off quickly so she could finally leave the water. 

A neatly folded towel awaited her at the corner of the sink and she wrapped it quickly around herself, suddenly cold. Once she’d dried off, she collected her clothes off the floor, dressed herself, and made her way out to the living room.

“Here, sit down. I ordered food,” Amélie told her when she noticed Angela trying to identify the source of the warm smell drifting in from the kitchen. “I hope you like Thai.”

“I do.” She did as instructed and settled onto the couch as Amélie left the room only to come back seconds later with a large takeout bag in one hand and two plates in the other. “Thank you, really.”

“Don’t mention it.”

She set everything onto the table and Angela helped her unpack the food. The smell of it made her stomach rumble. Amélie smiled at the sound.

“This is exactly what I needed,” Angela said. “I’m sorry, I’ve been so… dead since the minute I got here.”

“You seem better now.”

“I am, I think.”

“The bath helped?”

“Mm.”

“Good.” Amélie smiled, and then added, “You were in there quite a while.”

“Sorry.” She really was, especially seeing now how considerate Amélie had been in ordering her food, in being so easy about cancelling their plans to go out.

She took a seat beside her on the couch. “Don’t be. I was just teasing.”

It was quiet as they passed boxes between themselves to scoop food out onto their plates. Now that she’d cleared her head a bit and managed to relax, at least more so than before, Angela’s hunger was starting to settle strongly at the pit of her stomach.

“Are they often this bad—the missions?” Amélie broke the silence.

Angela took a minute to answer. “Not usually…”

“But?”

She shrugged. “Sometimes it’s hard to think any of the missions are good. From a medic’s perspective, at least. Someone’s always… bleeding out from one thing or another. I guess the good ones are the ones where no one dies.”

“That sounds like quite a high standard.”

“My standards need to be high,” she said simply. “I can’t let myself settle for anything less.”

“I think I understand.” Amélie wasn’t looking at her, was looking down at their plates set against the table instead. “Not the part about… saving lives, or watching people die. I don’t know anything about that,” she clarified. “But I understand the feeling of needing to be so hard on yourself. It’s not so simple that someone can just tell you not to be.”

Their experiences were so different, but she saw how they could be similar. “I just… feel so _responsible_ ,” she admitted, and her throat was tight. “I feel like a failure when things don’t go right.”

“Youngest head of surgery in the history of the country, innovator in medical research, and now Overwatch’s greatest combat medic.” Angela couldn’t tell if she felt proud or not, in that moment, at hearing Amélie rattle off the list. “Objectively, no one can call you a failure.”

She took a deep breath and managed to sound half-convinced when she answered, “I know.”

Amélie raised her hand to brush a lock of Angela’s hair, still slightly damp from the bath, behind her ear. And then she wrapped her arm around her back so she could pull them closer, so she could hold her better. Angela let herself be guided into a hug that had her burying her face against Amélie’s neck. Everything she did for her, everything she’d done so far tonight, made her feel so cared for she thought she might be able to cry if she let herself. Her very presence was cathartic.

Angela melted in her arms so easily and she stayed there a while. The soft warmth of Amélie’s skin, so close to her lips, made her never want to pull away. The smell of Amélie’s hair—her own smelled the same, after the bath—had her breathing deep and easy. The weight of Amélie, the feel of her arms around her back, grounded her like nothing else could, like nothing else had in a long time.

She might have been all right staying there indefinitely, but then Amélie’s hand, the one against her back, moved up to thread through her hair. Angela shifted closer without thinking, tilted her head to let her fingers run against the back of it more easily. It felt good. She had the decency not to make a sound, but her breath caught in her throat and a new tension coiled around her as Amélie’s grip tightened against her hair. Not hard, not pulling, just enough. The pressure left after a second, and Angela drew away before she could do it again. It was too warm, the feeling low in her stomach that climbed up through her chest and settled in color over her cheeks.

“Let’s eat,” Amélie said after they’d separated, like not a thing had happened, seemingly completely unaffected, and unaware of the fluttering feeling she’d left Angela with.

They ate, and Angela wolfed down her plate before piling more onto it for a round of seconds. She hadn’t eaten since this morning, before she’d left for the mission, and then she either hadn’t thought to, or had her appetite obliterated by stress.

“Are you in the mood to watch a movie?” Amélie asked her.

“Sure, that sounds nice.” She wouldn’t have to think too much if they put something on. It would be just enough to hold her attention away from her thoughts, while not being too demanding to focus on.

Amélie asked her what kind of movies she liked, but she only answered, noncommittally, that anything would do. She ended up putting on a drama, something she hadn’t heard of before that looked at least a few decades old. A bit slow, but the writing was good. Her attention slipped away every now and then as she felt the day catch up with her, but she did her best not to let her mind wander. 

At some point, she fell asleep. She didn’t realize it until a hand fell over her arm to shake her softly awake. The sound of her name made her open her eyes. Her head rested against Amélie’s shoulder, where it had fallen after she’d dozed off. The television screen was dark, and she had no idea if the movie had just been switched off, or if she’d slept so long that it had ended a while ago.

“Sorry to wake you,” Amélie apologized.

“It’s okay,” she said quickly, straightening herself again. Her neck was a bit sore from the angle she’d been holding her head at. She’d been sleeping so soundly. “Sorry if I was heavy.”

“Not at all.”

Angela heard the beeping sound of a car locking outside, followed by that of footsteps just past the apartment’s entrance. She realized, then, that Amélie had likely only woken her when she heard Gérard’s car pulling in from the street. She scooted further up the couch, so she wasn’t slouching into it anymore, and quickly put her hair up so that it didn’t look a mess. The key turned in the front door’s lock.

“Hey,” he said as soon as he stepped in. “Sorry I’m back so late.”

“Did you have fun?” Amélie asked, leaning against the arm of the couch to face him better.

“Yeah, it was a good time.” He shucked off his shoes. “I’m surprised you’re still here, Angela.” He didn’t mean to imply he was displeased by her presence whatsoever, and it didn’t come out that way.

“Me too,” she said. “I guess we just… lost track of time. I’m getting tired.” She stood up, then, slowly, and stretched a little.

“Are you alright to drive?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Because you can stay the night if you need to,” he offered. “Or I can drive you home, or call you a cab.”

“Really, I’ll be fine. I promise.” She smiled as extra assurance. She’d been doted on quite enough for one night. “Thank you, though.”

Gérard shrugged out of his jacket and draped it over the back of the armchair beside the couch before he made his way to the table where all the food still sat. He picked up one of the takeout boxes.

“It’s probably cold by now,” Amélie told him.

“Nothing the microwave can’t fix.” He grabbed a couple other boxes, too. “You heading out, Angela?”

“I’d better.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow, then. Drive safely, alright?”

She nodded, though she wasn’t sure he saw it before he turned to disappear into the kitchen. Amélie stood and they walked together to the door, where she waited for Angela to put on her shoes.

“I’ll walk you out,” she told her.

Her car was parked just along the sidewalk. It was quiet until they reached it, and then Angela said, “Thanks for tonight—I needed it.”

“Anytime.” Her hand found her arm, and stayed there. “If you ever need to talk, or… just, anything. You can call me.” Angela nodded, and then Amélie corrected herself, “Please, call me.” 

“I will.” She would try, at least. Tonight had proven that accepting a bit of help, having a shoulder to lean on, was much needed every once in a while. She just wasn’t terribly used to it.

Amélie didn’t kiss her, like she normally did, when they parted. She found her hand instead, and held it in her own. When neither of them let go, she threaded their fingers together. Angela squeezed before finally slipping her fingers free. And then they said nothing, because there was nothing they could say.

Angela, tired as she was, managed a soft smile before climbing into the car.

“Get home safe,” Amélie told her, and her voice was so warm, Angela wished she could wrap herself up in it every night before falling into bed.

“Sleep well tonight, Amélie.”


	7. Chapter 7

It was a warm afternoon in August when Amélie entered Angela’s apartment for the first time. The unit sat on the third floor of an old but well preserved building, with high ceilings and tall windows and narrow hallways. The last of the sun was shining in through the living room window when they stepped inside, and the warm glow it cast against the hardwood flooring and the furniture made the space feel cozy. The place wasn’t immaculate, but there was a crisp cleanness to everything in it. And somehow even the blankets tossed haphazardly onto the couch, even the piles of book stacked by the windowsill, even the clutter over the end table, seemed organized in their own way. Amélie could tell Angela probably didn’t spend as great a deal of time in her apartment as most people did, because other than a few frames for decoration, the walls were rather barren.

She put her quiet inspection of the room on pause when she saw the round shape of a cat curled up on the couch. Her sitting on the cushion beside it made it lift its head, eyes dazed with sleep.

“I didn’t know you had a cat.”

It stretched where it sat, and then curiously sniffed at the tips of Amélie’s fingers when she presented them to its little pink nose. Its fur was a soft off-white splotched with patches of a faded golden cream. Angela sat on the other side of the couch and when she petted along its back, its eyes narrowed happily. Amélie’s scratching the top of its head earned her the beginnings of a purr.

“Her name’s _Weggli_ ,” she told her.

“Does that actually mean anything?” It almost sounded too cute to be a word.

“Of course.” Angela looked like she was trying not to smile too wide. “It means bread roll.” Amélie laughed.

“ _Enchant_ é _, pain au lait._ ” The cat seemed to approve of the rhyming of her voice, because she pressed her cheek hard into Amélie’s hand, asking for scratches. Her purring was easily audible now.

“She really likes you.” Angela sounded a little surprised. “It usually takes her a bit to warm up to strangers.”

“I’m honored.”

Weggli had unrolled herself from her original sleeping position and was now sprawled out comfortably between them. Her ear twitched when Amélie tickled the fine hairs there. It made her happy to know that Angela had this to come home to.

“How long have you had her?”

“Oh, since she was a kitten. A friend from med school—her cat had a litter, so she let me have one of the babies.”

“I don’t think I would have guessed you had a cat,” she admitted.

“Did you think I was a dog person?” Like the suggestion bordered on being offensive.

“Not for a second,” Amélie assured her. Angela hummed, appeased.

Weggli’s ears twitched at something neither of them could hear, and she lifted her head, listening, looking towards the window. She stood, hopped off the couch, and stretched mid-walk on her way to the low bookshelf sitting across from them, from which she could look down onto the sidewalk.

Amélie's attention was pulled from the cat when she noticed what sat at the corner of the room, in the shadow of the tall bookcase beside it. It was a beautiful honey brown cello, poised perfectly against its stand, begging to be picked up.

“You never mentioned this,” she said as she got up from where she sat to inspect it more closely. “Does she have a name, too?” Her fingers found the cello’s scroll and she followed the grooves there.

“No.”

“Can I move it?”

“Just be careful,” Angela asked of her.

For something so big, it was lighter than she initially expected, but then she reminded herself it was mostly air, anyways. She took it from its place with the greatest care, not letting it bump up against anything as she walked back to the couch.

“How long have you been playing?” Cellos weren’t cheap; she figured Angela was probably more than halfway decent if she owned one herself. Then again, a doctor of her status could probably afford one ten times over.

“I picked it up when I was in school.” She looked at the instrument like she was looking at it for the first time in a while, considered its shape. “I used to play a lot more back then. It was a nice break from all the stress and the work… In hindsight, I have no idea how I found the time for it, my course load being the way it was.”

“It suits you,” Amélie told her. It was easy to imagine her with a bow in hand, practicing and perfecting pieces late into the night to ward off other thoughts, sometimes so late, without her realizing, that she saw the sunrise. The cello held in it the color of Angela—the color of her hair, the color of Weggli, the color of the light shining through her living room window, the color of the feeling she lit in Amélie’s chest.

“Will you play something for me?” She couldn’t help herself asking.

“Ah—I don’t know,” Angela started. The faintest dusting of pink settled over her cheeks and she subconsciously leaned a bit away when Amélie tried to hand the instrument off to her. “I don't really play so much anymore. I’m rusty.”

If she didn’t want to, then that was that. Amélie tried not to look too disappointed at the response, but something in her expression must have betrayed her, because Angela retracted her statement softly.

“I can try, though. Just bear with me if it’s awful.”

“Only if you want to,” Amélie told her.

Angela shook off her nerves and reached to take the instrument from her hands. “I want to.”

She moved to sit onto the chair by the window, and Amélie watched in silence as she went through the motions of positioning herself properly. There was a stand carrying sheet music just next to where she had first picked up the cello, but Angela didn’t bother with it. She shifted, fidgeted, trying to get comfortable.

“Stage fright?” Amélie said, smiling a little.

“Some of us aren’t professional performers.”

With her knees pressed just below the cello’s waist and her hand cradling its neck, she brought her bow down against its strings. For someone who’d seemed rather nervous, she played loosely and confidently. Amélie watched, transfixed by the precise dance of her fingers and the clear sounds they drew out. The melody was slow and a touch melancholic, but something about the way Angela played made it warm and tender, too. Her body swayed subtly against the music when she grew concentrated, and her hair fell softly against her face whenever she looked down at her hands. She stopped about a minute in, though, and her bow hand dropped to her side—as far as she remembered, or as far as she had learned, apparently.

“ _Le cygne_ ,” Amélie said. “You play it beautifully.”

Angela smiled, either at her recognition of the piece, or at her compliment, or perhaps both. “Familiar with Saint-Saëns?”

“I dance to Western art music for a living, _Chérie_.” A little bit chiding, but in good nature. Angela laughed.

“Yes, I suppose you do.”

“It used to be part of my solo repertoire. But the company took it out of rotation a couple years ago. It’s one of the those pieces that always felt… emotionally demanding to dance to, almost, no matter how much I’d familiarize myself with it.”

“I think I feel that when I’m playing it, too.”

“I do love it, though.” Her eyes fell to where Angela’s fingers were picking at the strings, not hard enough to really draw out a sound. “I have a keyboard in Paris—I wish I had it here. I know the accompaniment.” That, despite having had to hear it a million times in rehearsal, she’d decided to learn to play the piece just went to show how much she enjoyed it.

“You play?” Angela asked with a smile in her voice, one eyebrow arching up.

“Well—not like you play the cello.” She thought it wasn’t very much like Angela to be modest, but perhaps it had to do with her considering her playing not much more than a hobby. But she was rather good, and well practiced, too, if the number of sheet music books lining the bottommost shelf of the bookcase was any indication. “But my parents made me take lessons when I was little, before I got really serious about dancing. I’m alright at it. I don’t really practice, I just sort of play whenever there’s something I want to play.”

 Angela’s smile turned devious as she listened to her speak, and then she stood, carefully propping the cello up against the side of the couch.

“Give me just one second,” she said as she stepped over Amélie’s legs to get to the other side of the living room. And then, she disappeared down the hallway and into what Amélie assumed was the bedroom. 

While Angela dug around for something or other—she could tell by the sound of things being shuffled around, muffled as it was from the living room—Weggli made her way back over to the couch. She scratched her face against a corner of the cushion, but refused to jump up when Amélie patted her hand against it.  

“ _Viens ici_ ,” she tried to coax her softly, but the cat turned and jumped onto the coffee table instead. Realizing she wasn’t going to win out this battle, Amélie sat closer to the edge of the couch so that she could pet her regardless.

The rummaging in the other room had stopped in the meantime, and sure enough, Angela reemerged with a triumphant smile on her face.

“Oh, god,” Amélie said. “You’re going to make me live up to my word.” Angela held in her hands an old keyboard that looked like it hadn’t been put to use in years. “How many instruments are you hiding away in this apartment?”

“An old roommate left this one behind, so I’ve had it since,” she explained.

“Does it work?” It looked like it had been bought easily over a decade ago.

“It should.”

She set the keyboard down on its side against the arm of the couch, found an outlet to plug it into, and picked it up again to put it on the table. Weggli was in the way. Angela scooped her up with her free hand and earned herself a displeased meow for it. “ _Entschuldigung, Frau Weggli_ ,” she answered. Another meow as she was set down on the floor.

“I wish I had the stand for it,” Angela said apologetically.

“It’s fine, I can sit on the floor.”

She settled down against the carpet on her knees while Angela stepped around to the other side of the room again.

“Let me check if I have the sheets for the accompaniment…” she said as she reached for one of the books on the shelf. She leafed through it quickly, frowned, then leafed one more time before closing it. “Wishful thinking.”

“I think I remember most of it.” It was just a matter of digging up some of the muscle memory. She turned the keyboard on and tried a couple times to play the beginning before she was certain she got the first several measures right. “There. I think that’s it, no?”

“Sounds right to me, from what I remember.”

She played a while by herself, trying to piece together as much of it as she could. There was a middle section she wasn’t sure on anymore, and without anything to read or listen to for guidance, sometimes she wasn’t sure when the chords should switch, either.

“Let’s try it together,” Angela suggested when it seemed she’d hit a wall. “Maybe you’ll make better sense of it that way.

Just figuring out precisely where Angela was supposed to come in took a few tries, but they kept at it. And then, once the notes they played could swell and meld together, it was easy to pick out where their mistakes were. Where Angela was sometimes eager to move on to the next portion of the piece, Amélie knew the importance of repetition, and urged her to slow down with her instead. Ultimately, it pleased the perfectionist in Angela, when their union turned out just right as a result. 

They might have played endlessly, dancing circles around each other with the music they made, but after a while, it became clear there was nowhere else to go. Setting the fact that the tips of her fingers were starting to hurt aside, Angela didn’t know the piece in full yet, and Amélie had too many blanks to fill without sheet music in front of her.

“I want to finish it so badly,” Angela admitted as she reluctantly set the cello aside. “I feel like I won’t be satisfied until we do.”

“Patience,” Amélie smiled, but then quickly grew concentrated again as she went on playing, trying to figure more out. Angela came to sit right beside her against the couch after she’d put the cello back on its stand in the corner of the room. Amélie could feel the weight of her eyes over her. It was distracting.

“Don’t frustrate yourself with it,” she told her. “There’s only so much you can dig up.”

Amélie sighed and finally pulled her hands away from the keyboard.

“This was so fun,” she said, turning her head to look at Angela now.

“It was,” she agreed, smiling.

“Honestly, I don’t remember the last time I had so much fun doing something like this…” Something so spontaneous, something that was so rewardingly challenging and laid back and soothing at the same time. “It’s been a while since I’ve played, too.”

“Me too.” Angela looked down at her left hand, the one she used against the fingerboard. “I used to have stronger calluses, but now they’re hardly there.” Before she could really assess any damage she might have done, Amélie grabbed her gently by the wrist and pulled her hand towards her. With the tips of her fingers she traced Angela’s where they were slightly red, raw from playing so much at once. They twitched, just barely, under her touch.

“Does it hurt?” she asked, pulling the slightest bit away at the reaction.

“No, not really.”

“Not really?”

“You’re not aggravating it.”

So she settled her touch against her again, this time feeling against her skin for traces of calluses that she’d hadn’t know were there before today. They were faint, but they were there. And now there were fresher lines, too, from how hard she’d been playing just minutes ago.

“I never noticed before.”

Angela’s head was bowed, looking down at their hands. She made a sound, like a hum, as some sort of acknowledgment of the comment, but didn’t say anything otherwise. Amélie ran her fingertips down Angela’s fingers, to her palm, and then back up. And then stopped when Angela stilled her hand with her own. She held it there, against Amélie’s lap.

It was quiet until she said, “I can’t believe the summer’s ended.” Her voice sounded sad, and still she didn’t look Amélie’s way.

“I’m going to miss you, when I’m in Paris,” she dared tell her, no matter what the implication of stating it so honestly might be.

Angela swallowed. “I’ll miss you, too.”

“Come visit me.”

“I can try, but you know what my hours are like.”

“If you happen to be in the area.” There were medical and scientific conferences across the whole of the continent often enough, not to mention missions based in countries other than Switzerland.

“Alright, if I’m nearby. I promise,” she said, looking at her now. “Are you not coming back anytime soon?”

“I don’t know. Maybe for the holidays, but we haven’t decided yet if we’re going to spend them here or there.”

Angela hummed. Four months wasn’t so far away, but after spending so many days together lately, if seemed like it would be far too long to wait. Time went by too quickly when they shared it.

Today, with all their music playing to sidetrack them, had been no different. They’d meant to go out to dinner, but it was rather late now, and neither found they particularly wanted to move from where they sat side by side, hands still close together.   

“Do you want to eat here?” Angela asked her when she saw her check her phone for the time. “We can cook something.”

She hesitated, but then answered, “Alright.”

“Only if you want to.”

“I do.” Of course she did; she’d only been trying to factor in how late to get home, so that she could see Gérard, too. But he would be back late.

They stood from where they sat on the floor, and Amélie took a minute to stretch out from the position she’d spent so much time in. Then, she followed Angela into the kitchen—small, but with a surprising amount of counter space, and enough in the way of windows to make it feel more spacious than it actually was—and helped wherever she was asked to. Some of the cupboards, she found, were incredibly organized, while others were something of a mess, even though Angela always knew exactly where to find what she needed.  

The rhythm they set into when they finally started prepping and cooking was something so natural. Angela, at some point, started softly humming bits and pieces of the melody from The Swan—inevitable, after so much time spent on it—until it spread to Amélie, too, without them noticing before it was too late. The worst was that it wasn’t easy to hum whatsoever. But every time one of them missed a note, either too high or too low, is sent them into a bout of soft laughter.

“You know what’s sad?” Angela asked. Her cheeks were all warm, from being so close to the heat of the stove, from giggling so much, from being with Amélie.

“No.”

“We’re not even humming it properly to the end, because we’re too used to hearing just half of it.”

Amélie laughed—a strong laugh, probably harder than Angela had ever heard her laugh while she was sober. “Good,” she decided. “That way there’s less for us to butcher.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. My range is amazing.”

“Of course. Amazing in all the same ways as mine.”

Angela smiled. “Precisely.”

The food was almost ready now, and Amélie pulled two plates and two sets of cutlery out for them.

“Let’s make a deal,” she said, turning to look at Angela where she stood by the stove. They were no more than a couple feet apart.

“Hmm?” she prompted.

“I’m going to practice while we’re away from each other. If you do, too, we can put our parts together properly next time I’m here.”

“So, four months from now,” she said, a bit like a question. She was smiling with one eyebrow quirked up. Amélie already knew it wouldn’t take much convincing to get her to try and sway Gérard into spending Christmas in Zurich. Apparently, Angela knew it, too. “That sounds reasonable.”

“And it has to be _really_ good,” she added. “As perfect as possible—I’ll call you just to remind you to practice enough, if that’s what it takes.”

Angela laughed. “Alright, as perfect as possible,” she repeated. “It’s a promise.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy new year, guys! Here's an extra long chapter :) 
> 
> (just as a heads up, I'm kind of busy over the next couple of weeks, so the next update should come towards the middle/end of the month)

The voyage from Oxford to London took just over an hour, the waiting Angela had to do in St Pancras, a half hour, and the time it would take for the Eurostar to reach Paris, over two hours more. Train food was usually just short of passable, but she hadn’t eaten since before the conference this afternoon—it was already half past eight—and she wolfed down the sandwich she'd bought from the bar much too quickly to properly taste it, anyway. She sat staring out the window, though there wasn’t much to look at between how dark it was outside and how the lights from inside reflected off the pane. She should have been tired enough to sleep. But the nervous excitement that multiplied butterflies in her belly every second she drew closer to Paris kept her awake.

They’d fallen into the habit of texting each other nearly every day over the past couple of months, and called about once a week—sometimes more, when something happened to remind one of the other, or when there was news to share, and sometimes less, when they were too caught up with work to find the time. Ever since Angela had booked her tickets, all those conversations had become riddled with _‘I can’t wait to see you’_ s, and no matter how long the fact of it had had to sink in, Angela still couldn’t quite believe she’d managed to fit a visit into her schedule.

She spotted Amélie first, when she stepped off the train at the Gare du Nord, and then Amélie turned, like the weight of her gaze had tipped her off to her presence. Angela tried not to smile too wide as she closed the distance between them, but then Amélie was smiling, too, and the effort was in vain. She took her in her arms as soon as Angela was within reach, and Angela let the bag she’d slung over her shoulder drop to their feet so she could hug her back just as strong. And they stayed that way a good few seconds, holding on tight, paying just as much mind to the commotion of the train station surrounding them as it was paying them. The happiest of feelings warmed her from the chest out, glowing everywhere they touched. When Amélie pulled away, Angela could do nothing but stand there staring back at her for moments more, dumbstruck at just how beautiful she was. It wasn’t as though she’d forgotten, really, but somehow she felt like she was seeing her for the first time all over again. The cute curve of her nose, the delicate dip of her Cupid’s bow, the shape of her face, the fullness of her lashes and the warmth of her eyes—every bit as pretty as the next.

Angela felt the urge to link their hands together as she followed Amélie out the train station, but stopped herself doing so in favor of holding on to the cuff of her sleeve whenever she weaved too far ahead of her through the crowd. But when they found her car outside, Amélie took the bag from her hands and quickly tossed it into the back seat before turning to her. She took her face in one hand and pressed a happy kiss against her cheek, and that, Angela thought, was much better, much warmer, than holding hands would have been.

* * *

 

Amélie’s apartment—it was Gérard’s, too, but Amélie had lived in it before they’d moved in together, and he hardly spent any amount of time in Paris lately—was rather spacious for a one bedroom in the city. The first thing Angela noticed was the furniture: heavy pieces made of dark walnut, discreetly inlayed with pearl around the corners and handles, obviously inherited given how much she suspected each of them might cost. It was easy to picture Amélie having grown up in a well-to-do family. The living room walls were painted a rich wine red, and coupled with the color of the furniture, made the space feel small in a cozy sort of way. It smelled nice, too, like vanilla and lavender and just faintly like burning wood. The fireplace, closer to the size of a little burning stove, sitting in the corner of the room, explained that last one, though it was dead at the moment.

Beside it, standing flush against one of the couch’s armrests, was the keyboard Amélie had mentioned the last time they’d seen each other. It was much nicer than the one she had tucked away in her closet at home. She wondered if it had always been there, or if it’d only taken semi-permanent residency in the living room since Amélie had come back from Zurich at the end of the summer.

“I feel like it’d be nicer to invest in a place with an extra bedroom, but I don’t have guests over very often, and I’m kind of attached to this apartment,” Amélie said as she took Angela’s coat and found a place for it in the closet. “I promise the futon’s great, though. It’s newer than my mattress—probably better, too.”

“I’ve been sleeping in hotel beds the past week. So that sounds a million times better,” Angela assured her.

“I hope you manage to sleep well tonight.”

Angela watched as she walked down the hall to open a different closet, and stretched on the tips of her toes, reaching for something on the topmost shelf.

“Have you eaten?”

“I did—on the train.”

“There’s food in the fridge if you’re still hungry. Just let me know.”

“I should be fine.”

Amélie tucked under her arm a deep blue bed sheet, and then turned with one blanket in each hand to face Angela.

“Which one do you want?”

“The warmer one.”

Amélie smiled and tossed the thick white knitted blanket her way before shoving the other back up into the closet. Angela caught it in her arms, and the pleasant, soft smell of detergent came up from the fabric when she did.

“I’m sorry for not getting it ready before you came,” she said as she came around to move the coffee table to the side of the room. Angela helped her pull the futon out.

“Don’t worry about it. I know you’ve been busy.” She grabbed onto one side of the fitted sheet to help Amélie get it over the mattress.

“How was the conference?” she asked as they made the bed together.

“Pretty good, actually. Long, but good.”

“Were you presenting anything?”

“No, not really—most of the research I do under Overwatch is under wraps. Makes going to conferences feel almost like a break. I get to sit and watch people squirm when they realize I’m in the audience.”

Amélie laughed. “That’s horrible.”

“I’m never mean,” Angela said in her defense. Having power in a field where she’d spent so long proving herself ten times over to men with half her potential felt good, though. “And it’s not like I make them nervous on purpose.”

“Of course not,” Amélie said as she rounded the corner of the bed to stand beside her. “You’re naturally very intimidating, Docteur.” A tiny sound of surprise escaped Angela when Amélie poked at the ticklish spot just at her waist. She dropped the blanket in her hands reflexively as she tried to move away from the touch. Amélie stole it from her with the smuggest smile.

“That’s underhanded,” Angela told her. Her face felt warm, but Amélie hadn’t quite succeeded at making her blush.

“How could I have known you were ticklish?” she answered innocently. Angela _humphed_ and so Amélie amended her statement, “Sorry, _very_ ticklish.”

Angela, trying hard to look unamused, but not particularly succeeding, tossed the closest pillow within reach straight against her chest to quiet her. Amelie caught it easily, still smiling as she sheathed it into a fresh pillowcase.

“I’m quite a rude host,” she said, and now she helped Angela unfold the blanket out over the sheets. The result looked quite cozy. “Not only making you make the bed, but teasing you, too—after you’ve taken time off to see me.”

Angela rolled her eyes, but answered, “Headquarters won’t miss me much for two days.” She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d taken time off from work. If anything, she should have been thanking Amélie for providing her a more than welcome excuse—not that she’d mentioned to anyone on base she’d be spending time in Paris.

“Really, though, thanks for that.”

“Thank you for letting me stay. And letting me see you perform.” She was excited for the ballet tomorrow night—so curious to finally see Amélie dance, after she’d only almost caught her practicing once or twice.

“Speaking of,” she said, placing a gentle hand over Angela’s shoulder as she moved around her. “Let me give you your ticket now.”

She disappeared down the hallway and reemerged holding a plain white envelope, which she handed off to Angela.

“I can’t remember the last time I printed a ticket out for anything.”

“I got it directly from the ticket office, so that’s how they gave it to me,” she said with a shrug.

“Thank you.” She looked inside the envelope, then back up at Amélie with a small smile. “Best seat in the house, of course?”

“Nothing less for you, _Chérie.”_

Angela sort of hated how much she liked that Amélie had taken to calling her that lately. But it felt soft and intimate and vaguely conspiratorial all at once, and it coaxed something in her closer to the surface every time.

Amélie’s hand was on her again, then, just over her arm as she asked, “Do you need anything? Before I go to bed?”

“No, I’m alright.”

“I’d stay up longer with you, but, you know—warm ups and rehearsals start early,” she explained. “I don’t want to be tired for the show’s closing night.”

“It’s fine, really,” Angela assured her. “I’m pretty tired myself.” She reached to take Amélie’s hand that was still against her, and held it in her own. “We have all of tomorrow night, anyways.”

“I’ll leave a spare set of keys for you on the table before I leave in the morning.”

“Sounds good.”

Amélie was quiet for a moment as she looked at her, and then she was trying not to smile too big, but it reached her eyes easily and drew lines at their corners. “I’m so happy you’re here.”

“Me too.”

“Did you miss me terribly?”

She was fixing her with a look now that had Angela often not knowing what to do with herself. “Yes,” she admitted honestly.

And after a little while, Amélie said, “I missed you,” and Angela realized maybe she’d been waiting for her to ask the question back. She wondered how often Amélie got lonely, living here by herself, how often she thought about all the affection she was missing. She wondered how often she specifically thought about her, and then, without being able to help it, wondered how often she thought specifically of Gérard, too. It made her suddenly hyperconscious of the hand she held Amélie by, and she felt her palm start to sweat for it. They drew away only to stay loosely linked by their fingers.

“Is something wrong?” In her concern over Angela’s silence, her sudden subtle withdrawal, Amélie, whether consciously or not, moved closer to her, as though to comfort.

“No,” she answered rather easily. It was made more convincing with a soft expression. “Just tired—out of it, I guess.”

That seemed to assuage Amélie. “I’ll let you sleep, then—the bathroom is the first door on the right just down the hall if you need it.”

“Thanks, Amélie.”

“Of course.” She smiled and then paused, seemed to consider something, before leaning down to place a barely-there kiss over her cheek for the second time in one night. It was softer than the first, not saturated with pure unchecked enthusiasm, but somehow it felt much heavier against her skin. “ _Bonne nuit, Docteur._ ”  

* * *

 

Angela hadn’t slept so soundly in a long while. It was half past ten and the sun was shining in over her blanket from the little sliver of window the curtain across from her failed to cover up. She’d expected for Amélie’s departure to stir her at least a little bit, light a sleeper as she was, but she was alone in the apartment when she woke up, and had been for a couple hours from what she could tell.

A note waited on the kitchen counter. She picked it up and read Amélie’s tight cursive scrawl, ‘ _Keys are by the coffeemaker. Help yourself to whatever you’d like.’_ Below were brief instructions on which metro line to take to the show that night, and then, she’d signed off with, ‘ _À ce soir’_.

Taking a shower and making coffee only killed so much time, no matter how slowly she went about it, so she decided to walk around the neighborhood to do away with the afternoon more quickly. A bakery with a large storefront sat just a block away on Amélie’s street. She stopped by it on her way back, bought a quiche she could have for dinner, and then a profiterole that she ate on the last leg of her walk. The air was brisk this time of year, and her hands had grown cold by the time she was inside the apartment again.

The rest of the day, she devoted to drafting what research she could, being away from the lab, and once that was done, compiling notes from the Oxford conference. Jack didn’t mind sending her off to them on Overwatch’s time so long as she compiled reports for the organization’s benefit. By the time she'd finished reformatting and retyping anything and everything of note, it was time to get ready. She stretched back against the futon from where she’d been sitting over it, legs crossed, and felt tension that she hadn't even know was there leave her spine.

A short dress sat at the bottom of the bag she’d packed for the trip, but given the temperature was sure to drop as the night wore on, she quickly decided against it. She pulled out a pair of slacks and a black button-down shirt instead—simple but nice. And then she replaced her usual earrings with a subtle pair of silver ones that hung down just to the corner of her jaw and matched the necklace she’d wear along with them. She stood staring at her reflection in the bathroom mirror for a little while after putting on a bit of makeup. Amélie’s voice came to her through memory, then, “ _Your hair looks nice up.”_

She picked it up where it sat just about her shoulders and scooped up loose strands until she was satisfied with how it looked—a precise level of messy. She smiled at the finished product and saw herself blush as she caught herself wondering how Amélie would find her when they saw each other again later tonight.

* * *

 

Angela arrived at the opera house and found her seat in one of the balconies overlooking the stage. Somehow she’d always pictured herself staring up at Amélie during the performance, but this might very well have been one of the best seats in the house. Scarce few people sat in the section with her, the entirety of the audience lay at her feet, she’d have a bird’s eye view of the stage once the curtains opened—and best of all, she could see the musicians in the pit. Ballet had never been a particular point of interest for her. Its subtleties escaped her almost entirely, and she’d historically always preferred the accompanying music to the dancing itself. 

Amélie, however, hardly had to compete to hold her attention. Even though Angela had never truly seen her dance before, it felt a naturally familiar sight, as though she’d already witnessed her a thousand times. A perfect extension of Amélie. And still she knew she could watch her glide across the stage a thousand times more without feeling any less enchanted.

Amélie had a strength to her that Angela hadn’t quite noticed before. Her costume was tastefully elaborate, but still clung distinctly to her form, hugged the leanness in her legs, stretched taut over the muscles over her belly, and laid the ones at her back bare. Angela could name each and every one of them as they flexed in unison, and still she marveled at how they produced precise movements as delicate as porcelain. With all her quiet, powerful grace, Amélie’s shape, her body and its workings, was beautiful in an understated sort of way.

Once the performance was finished, she beamed as she lined up to take a bow alongside the rest of the cast. Angela wondered how badly she wanted to be rid of those shoes she had on, and if she was straining at all to keep up that smile. She thought she caught her eye, then, maybe for just a second, before the curtains finally closed. Slowly, the room was bathed in light again and Angela watched as the crowd beneath her stirred awake. They stood in patches and filed out the room like ants filing out a colony, though with much less meticulous arrangement.

Angela stayed in place, watching the mess of it from a safe distance, until a message lit up her phone’s screen. She read the instructions Amélie detailed there, and let them lead her out the balcony and back down the stairs to the vestibule of the opera house. A bit of relatively guided wandering later, and she found what had to be the door leading to backstage. Judging by the velvet rope stretched between stanchions barring her entry, she assumed she was in the right place.

She hardly had time to knock properly against the door—a quiet, shy sound—before it opened just enough for a hand to grab hold of her arm and pull her through. It was darker inside than out, and it took her eyes a few seconds to readjust and properly make out Amélie before her. The sharp makeup she’d had on for the duration of the show had already been completely washed off, her costume and leotard had been replaced with everyday pants and a comfortable shirt, and her feet were free of her pointe shoes.

“So, how was it?” Amélie asked with a bright smile, like she already knew exactly how breathtaking her performance had been.

“You were amazing,” Angela told her, and it might have sounded lame were it not for the awe in her voice. Amélie seemed pleased, because something in her eyes softened. She took a second to look Angela up and down.

“I like this,” she said as she skimmed the back of her fingers against the fabric of her shirt. And then, her hand trailed up to find her earrings. She let her touch feather there, over the soft skin at the corner of Angela’s jaw, as she played with them for a moment. “Beautiful.” The way Amélie’s gaze kept hers in place made her face grow warm.

Angela said thank you but it was lost among the commotion of several other dancers flocking about the both of them. Some hadn’t yet changed out of their costumes and she was glad to be able to see the detail of the feathers lining their skirts. She wished she could have seen Amélie’s up close, too.

“You are Angela, yes?”

“Amélie’s told us about you.”

She was surprised at the rush of attention cast upon her, and knowing now that Amélie had bothered to mention her made her fluster more easily. A good number of the women pulled her close to kiss her cheeks as they introduced themselves. She wasn’t always good at these sorts of things, but they all made it easy, being unintimidatingly social.

“Ziegler,” one of them parroted the name back to her after she’d said it, and Angela could see it in her eyes when she tried to piece information together. “I know your name—but you are a doctor, no?”

“Overwatch,” another offered before she could answer. “Her name’s been in the papers before.”

“ _Ah, j’me souviens_ ,” a new girl said excitedly, “You were on the big—” She struggled to find the word right word, gestured with her hands. Her accent was thick, and her English nowhere near as good as Amélie’s. “ _Tu sais, sur les affiches, il y a quelque mois_.”

Angela laughed softly. She’d forgotten about the recruitment posters Overwatch had circulated across Europe a while back. The amount of time she, along with everyone else deemed a suitable poster child, had been made to spend on the photo shoot had been criminal. It was somewhat surreal to find out that ballerinas in Paris had paid any attention at all to the finished product—enough to recognize her face months later.

She switched to French, to accommodate everyone in the room, as she answered, “I can’t believe anyone actually looked at those.”

“Oh, good—you speak French,” the same girl said, laughing, relieved.

“Well, she _is_ German,” another said, as though that offered enough in the way of explanation.

“Swiss, actually,” Amélie corrected. Angela felt her hand fall against the small of her back as she stood closer behind her.

“Even better.”

“But yes, the posters—I remember them, too.”

“I wish the company gathered us together for pretty posters—after all the makeup and costumes, you’d think it’d be easy to take more pictures more often.”

“It’s part of the magic, I think, to be able to only really see the costumes in show,” Angela said. “You were all beautiful, by the way.”

Her compliment was met with a brief chorus of ‘thank you’s; some of the girls were more modest, others more prideful, all of them ultimately happy to hear she’d enjoyed it. She looked to Amélie—the soft weight of her hand was still against her back—and saw a smile in her eyes. She could tell she was itching to tell her something by the way the corners of her mouth twitched for just a second, by how focused her gaze was on her. Angela quirked up an eyebrow, questioning, even though she knew that whatever Amélie had to say, it was something she’d stay quiet about until they weren’t in the other dancers’ company.

“I hope you all aren’t too tired.” Angela’s attention was pulled away as the hubbub ebbed again. A new face had crept up into their circle. “Last performance—drinks at my place, for whoever’s up for it.”

“I’m going home, I’m about to collapse.”

“Oh, come on, just for a drink. I’ll pay you a ride back.”

“I haven’t even gotten out of costume yet.”

The chatter swelled and started up again as they tried to figure out who would go and who wouldn’t—Angela was surprised any of them had any energy left at all after the performance.

“The two of you have to come,” the dancer closest to Angela said as she placed a hand over her arm. She was looking at Amélie, then.

“Only if Angela promises to drive back if I get too tired,” Amélie said with a wink. A quiet, subtle way to ask her if she was feeling up for it, too.

“You mean I’m your designated driver if you get too drunk?” she smiled. “Now I understand why you invited me.”

The hand against her back shifted to wrap further around her waist, so that the tips of Amélie’s fingers could glance over that sensitive spot she'd recently discovered at Angela’s side. It wasn’t enough to tickle, but she laughed, and shifted slightly where she stood.

“We’ll be there,” Amélie said, and Angela could tell just by the way her voice lilted up at the end—hardly perceptible—that she was trying not to laugh herself.

* * *

 

Amélie’s car was parked at the back of the lot, a ways away from the backdoor of the opera house. Angela was cold by the time she climbed up on the front seat, and when Amélie turned the heat on, she flipped the vents open and pointed them in her direction in hopes of warming up more quickly. She really shouldn’t have been so affected by it—the falls and winters in Switzerland were considerably worse than they were in Paris—but she’d sacrificed warmth for ease of packing when she’d chosen to bring this particular coat along over any of her heavier ones 

Amélie hadn’t said a thing since the moment they’d hopped in, and once they were pulling out of the lot, Angela grew impatient enough to ask, “What?”. Amélie was smiling, just barely.

“Nothing,” she said quickly. And then, “I didn’t know your French was so good.” Angela should have been more concerned about Amélie’s eyes staying on the road with how much she was staring at her. She looked out the window to cut her off.

“It isn’t, really.”

Amélie huffed softly through her nose at that. “I can’t believe you never spoke it for me,” she said with a note of mock-hurt.

“Because I never needed to,” Angela answered simply. “Besides, my English is better.”

“But _my_ French is better—not very fair, is it?”

She looked over at her, then, to find that same quietly smug smile on her face. “Exactly,” she said. “Your French is better. I didn’t want to make a fool of myself.”

Amélie’s hand left its position against the stick shift to rest with convincing casualty against Angela’s leg. “ _Chérie_ ,” she started, and Angela felt herself grow happily warm at being called so again. “Your accent is lovely.”

“Is it now?”

“Mm,” she affirmed. A pause, and then, through a smile, “Very Swiss.”

“Is that supposed to be a compliment?”

“Of course,” she answered definitively. “Because I like it—it’s charming.”

Angela couldn’t help herself from smiling as she looked out the window at all the cars whipping across a backdrop of city lights.

“Will you speak it with me from now on?” Amélie asked, and her fingers shifted against Angela’s leg.

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“If you speak German back—then, maybe.”

Amélie lips set into a pout, and Angela laughed.

“Fine, maybe I’ll learn a little,” she said. “To thank you for coming to see me.”

“As though the show itself wasn’t thanks enough—you were wonderful, really. Just… beautiful.”

“It means a lot to me, that you came.” She finally lifted her hand from where it still touched gently over Angela’s lap, and placed it over the wheel to better take a turn. And then her grip loosened just a little, like she thought about removing her hand, only to tighten again and stay in place. “I don’t know, it’s nice to perform with someone in mind… Gérard only makes it so often.”

“He catches at least a few shows every year, doesn’t he?”

“He does,” she said, and when she smiled, it was small, a bit far off. “I think he used to more often, a few years ago, but work has just been busier—and I don’t know, they recycle some of the shows from year to year, too.” Angela thought that she could sit and watch her performances back to back for years on end, that that hardly mattered. “I do love it when he makes it.”

“Has he seen this one?”

“What? Swan Lake?” she asked.

Angela nodded, and Amélie caught it out of the corner of her eye.

“A few times, I think. But not this year—he was here a couple months ago for La Bayadère.” She switched the topic, then, away from Gérard, and Angela wondered if it was particularly on purpose. “I love that one, the costumes are so beautiful.”

“Should I have aimed to see it instead?”

“No, I’m glad you saw Swan Lake. It’s one of my best performances, I think, as far as the classics go.” There was that air of pride about her that Angela thought she managed to wear so well. It was justified, too.

“I was certainly impressed,” Angela told her. She recalled the black swan’s numbers, the ones she liked best. “I don’t know how you didn’t fall after that one part—you were spinning like a top. Just watching you made me dizzy.”

“God, you have no idea how much sweat and blood has gone into perfecting those fouettés,” she admitted, but her eyes were smiling. It was rewarding to get something so challenging down to an art. “I’ve danced that pas de deux a million times now, and I still feel like falling to my knees every time it’s finished.”

“It didn’t show, not for a second.” Every minute of her dancing had looked nothing less than easily graceful.

Amélie pulled up to the curb to park just in front of a large apartment building, and made sure to meet Angela’s gaze between her maneuvering as she said, “Well, I’d say it was all well worth it, if it managed to excite your interest.” As though she hadn’t caught it since the moment they’d met. Just as quickly as she had invited tension between them, though, she quickly tried to veil it again. “Was it your first time seeing it?” she asked.

“It was.”

She’d heard the story before, even if only loosely and in bits and pieces, so she’d been surprised at the changes the Paris company had made. Odette, if memory served, traditionally died alongside Siegfried. But Angela had watched as Rothbart, the sorcerer responsible for the princess’s curse, killed Siegfried and then stole Amélie away.

“I thought the ending was different.”

“It is, usually,” Amélie told her. “But this version was choreographed by one of our directors, back in the 1980s. The company’s stuck to it since.” She turned the key out of the ignition and looked at Angela. “Were you hoping for something happier?”

She frowned slightly for just a second as she looked out the windshield, thinking. Happy endings were a nice break from all she had to see day to day. Maybe something heroic, something romantic in her, just wanted to heal tragedy away. “Maybe.”

* * *

 

They didn’t stay at the party long. Amélie stayed close by Angela’s side more often then not, and seemed quite content over getting to hear her speak French with everyone. After a glass or two of wine more than Angela had had, though, she started to tire—Angela could tell just by the way she held herself, by the way she sometimes leaned in close and lightly held her weight against her. And then, finally, when she’d reached her limit, she’d led them around the room to say their last goodbyes. Angela drove them home, as promised, after Amélie fished the car keys from her bag and placed them into the palm of her hand. 

It took her a minute more to open the front door than if she’d been sober, and then she pushed into the living room, and led Angela to the kitchen with their fingers laced loosely together. Angela knew it probably wasn’t the best idea when Amélie picked out a bottle from the wine rack, when she uncorked it and passed her a full glass before pouring herself one, too.

“Thanks for driving,” she said, a bit apologetic.

“Of course. You must be tired, too.”

“I still want to stay up a bit with you.” That did seem to remind her, though, that she still had shoes on, and she walked back towards the front door to slip out of them. She stretched out her toes and Angela heard them crack.

“Here, sit,” Angela told her as she pulled out one of the stools from underneath the little bar table just off from the kitchen. She sat on the other as Amélie came to join her. She watched her play with the stem of her glass for a moment. “I like your colleagues—it was really nice, tonight.”

Amélie smiled. “I think they liked you, too. I’m glad you had fun.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but for some reason, I’d sort of always imagined the atmosphere between dancers might be… a bit passive aggressive? You know, always in competition with each other.”

“I guess that’s how… movies and things make it look like.” She smiled, thinking. “There’s definitely competition, though. But never like that. It’s never been really mean or nasty, in my experience.”

“Maybe you’re just too likeable.” Intentionally or not, Amélie was a natural flirt, and easy to get along with for it.

“Well, obviously.” Angela pushed against her at that, silently chiding, and Amélie laughed. She answered seriously, then, “I think it’s just that we’re all in the same boat. We all know what it’s like.”

“You don’t think some of the girls are jealous?”

Her lips pursed. “Maybe. But believe it or not, I see less drama now that I’m an _Étoile_. I’ve earned my place, and they all know it.”

“I can tell they respect you, a lot of them. Especially the younger girls.”

“It’s mutual, I think, it really is,” she told her. “I have so much respect for them. Because I’ve been in their position—I know what it’s like to work so hard and look faceless to the audience, to hurt and ache and still receive so little attention. The truth of the matter is that as much as that can be frustrating, blending in is the best thing you can do, before you’re promoted. That’s where the challenge lies, dancing as a unit and blending into the backdrop. And then, once you’ve proven you can do that time and time again, you can really start to shine, you can dance front and center. It’s just the way things work.”

The way Amélie went on, eyes alight, drew Angela in. Her engagement was contagious.

“And the truth is,” she continued, “I couldn't do my job without them. I couldn’t, and they know it. It’s all connected. I feed off their energy during a performance.”

“And off the audience’s energy, too, I imagine.”

“That, too.” She took a generous sip of her wine and pushed the glass, half empty, away from her over the counter. Her eyes were already vaguely unfocused from the alcohol, and Angela turned away to finish her own drink, as an excuse to look elsewhere. “I liked dancing with someone in mind tonight,” she said softly. “It always… makes me a bit nervous, but I think it makes me dance better, too.”

“I made you nervous?” Angela smiled against the rim of her glass before setting it down again.

“A little.”

“Because I’m naturally intimidating?” she joked, repeating Amélie’s words from the previous night. Amélie rolled her eyes.

“I wanted you to like it. To like me.”

“I did,” she told her, and she felt her face grow warm. She was certain nothing could have happened to make her dislike Amélie’s performance. “Honestly, I never really liked ballet.” She paused, to see if the admittance had maybe offended her, but she was met only with a gaze, heavy against her own, that didn’t betray much of anything. She swallowed, and went on, “But you’re stunning. I think I’d like the art much more if you were in every show I saw.”

“Now you’re just flattering me.” She looked away, lashes hiding her gaze away from Angela as she reached to fiddle with the glass she’d pushed away only moments ago. She finished it quickly. When she reached for the bottle, to pour herself another, Angela’s hand came to rest against her own. She wasn’t really drunk quite yet, but a drink more would do it.

“I’ll put it away,” she agreed. “Did you want more?”

Angela shook her head. “No, I’m alright.”

Amélie pushed the cork loosely back into the neck of the bottle before looking to her again. She turned in her seat to face her better and reached for Angela’s earrings just the same way she had back at the opera house. It stilled them mid-sway.

“I really do like these,” she told her. “You don’t usually wear earrings.”

Angela shifted in her seat, but it did little to reinstate any distance between them. “I can’t have any in on the battlefield, or during surgeries, even.” Her voice sounded quieter than she’d meant for it to be as she let Amélie study her.

“Sometimes when I think about—” She stopped to reformulate whatever she was trying to say. “When I’m playing, at the piano.” Her eyes flitted to the living room and Angela didn’t have to turn to know they were resting over the keyboard’s form. “I think about you and about what you look like when you’re playing, too. I can see it so clearly, just like that time in your apartment. It’s the most beautiful thing. The music you make catches the light around you.” Her fingers still brushed against the earrings. Something in Angela prayed for her to stop there, for her not to say more. She could feel herself blushing—the raw honesty in Amélie’s voice made it all sound too much like a confession. “Just like these catch the lights in this room. I can imagine you holding the cello, wearing what you are now. Tonight, seeing me dance—I hope I made you feel the same way I feel when I see you playing.”

Her hands shifted down over the collar of her shirt and she smoothed out an imaginary crease there. Angela could feel a knot forming at the pit of her stomach, exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. “Amélie,” she said, and the sound of her name made her look up, made her properly meet her eyes. They said more than words could have at that moment. Her hands fell away slowly from where they rested against her.

She laughed it away softly. “God, I’m tired.” She leaned on her elbow against the counter and pressed her weight there.

“Do you want to sleep?”

“Mm,” she hummed affirmative.

She wasn’t so far gone that she needed help getting up, so she did it alone, to put the bottle of wine away properly. Angela stood, too, and grabbed their glasses to place them in the sink, otherwise empty. They clicked against the bottom of it.

When she turned around again, she found Amélie had stilled, hands against the counter, back still facing her, thinking. Or spacing out from having drank too much, Angela couldn’t tell which until she tried to speak. Her voice was small; she asked, weakly, “Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course.”

Then she turned her head just a tad, still pointedly looking away, but angled so she could see her peripherally. She hesitated. “What is it like—” She stopped, struggling over something. It came out slowly, “What is it like, to be with a woman?”

Angela was completely dumbstruck by the question, a question that had flown out of nowhere. She wondered, then, how long the thought had been on her mind. Amélie was quiet, tense—she could see it in the set of her shoulders, squared in on herself as she awaited an answer. Angela smiled, though, and it was audible in her voice when she teased, “And you’re certain you’re asking the right person?”

Amélie finally looked at her, then. “You’re saying I’m not?” Her voice was teasing, too, and her eyes were surprisingly focused given how much she’d had to drink. Angela laughed, but stayed quiet, thinking. Apparently too long, because Amélie quickly cut in, “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable. It’s a dumb question, anyways.”

“It’s not dumb.” It just wasn’t the kind of question a married woman, or any woman, for that matter, was encouraged to ask—the kind Amélie probably wished she wasn’t asking herself.

“I feel… I trust you,” she said. And then, softer, soft enough that Angela wondered if she’d meant for her to hear it, “But you’re probably both the best and worst person to be having this conversation with.” She swallowed away the dryness in her throat at Amélie acknowledging so casually, if a bit ambiguously, whatever it was that existed between them.

“It’s alright, really,” she assured her. Her instinct was to reach for Amélie’s hand against the counter, but she halted midway through the motion, and their fingers only brushed instead. “I was just thinking.”

Amélie waited, but she shifted now, to face Angela better. It felt partially like a cop-out answer, but she tried, anyway, “Being with a woman… feels to me just like being with a man must feel to someone who loves men.” It was different, too. It was different in so many ways. But it felt like the right thing, or rather, the safe thing, to say.

“That’s not—” The slightest beginnings of frustration came through in her voice and she looked away again. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Sorry.” She didn’t quite know what else to say. Amélie’s hand found hers properly where they laid side by side and Angela’s throat suddenly felt tight.

“Just— _How_ is it? What is it like?”

She dared look her way again, and her eyes held in them a curiosity so strong it was urgent. Angela could feel her starving for an answer, for anything at all, and she was suddenly glad she hadn’t had more to drink, because the thought of _showing_ Amélie just what it was like popped into her head for more than a second. Sometimes, she wondered if that was what Amélie wanted, if she was waiting for her to break first so that she’d feel less guilty for it. A fantasy to explore later.

But she did let that train of thought coax her into a new answer. “It feels… soft,” she started, and it felt like dipping the tip of her finger into scalding water. “Everything about it. When she looks at you and when she kisses you.”

Amélie’s lips were parted just the slightest bit as she hung on to her every word, and Angela knew she was playing with fire.

“Even if she… bites and marks you, there’s always something soft about it.”

She shifted her hand against Amélie’s and it burned, where they touched together.

“The feel of her skin against yours… and the shape of her under your hands.”

Her voice grew more quiet now, and it only drew Amélie’s attention all the closer. Angela saw her swallow thickly.

“The weight of her close against you, and the sounds she breathes against your lips.”

Angela couldn’t help her gaze trailing lower, past the delicate lines of Amélie’s collarbones left bare by the low cut of her shirt. The curve of her hips would have been the perfect place to grab, to push her back against the counter, but Angela stepped forward only to rest her hands on either side of Amélie instead.

“And the way she holds you tight… The feel of her around your fingers when she’s close.”

Amélie’s cheeks flushed a deep, pretty shade. Her eyes, pupils blown out wide against the receding dark brown of her irises, flitted to Angela’s lips. 

“It’s all soft,” she finished. That Amélie looked so mesmerized, caught off guard for once, made Angela’s heart beat all the faster.

She raised her hand to lay her palm flat against Angela’s belly. Her fingers found one of the buttons of her shirt, and she looked down as she played with it. Her touch was warm, caught between pulling her in and pushing her away, holding her in place. Angela was the one to finally take a step back. Amélie cleared her throat and refused, for a couple of seconds, to look back up at her again.

After a beat more of silence, Angela turned and slipped her hair free of the tie she’d done it up with. It released a tension from her scalp as she ran her fingers against it. She sighed, “We were heading to bed, weren’t we?”

That finally stirred Amélie from whatever spell she’d been cast under. She hummed in answer, and then said, “You can go ahead and use the bathroom first, if you’d like.”

Angela left the kitchen after just a glance back at Amélie. She grabbed the shirt and pants she’d slept in off the futon and then went down the hall to lock herself inside the bathroom. She changed, brushed her teeth, and was about to take off her makeup when she realized the little bottle of remover she’d brought had run dry.

Amélie had to have her own somewhere. 

Once she'd found the right drawer, Angela had to dig beneath a couple of toiletry cases to find the bottle she was looking for. She found cotton pads a drawer lower. There was an old shaving brush there, too, and she tried not to let guilt settle in her as she moved it aside quickly to reach the bag. She smeared and rubbed her makeup away before quickly putting everything back the way she’d found it. And then she washed her face with cold water in hopes of clearing her mind a bit from the wine.

Amélie caught her in the hallway. She’d changed into clothes to sleep in, too. She looked so soft, without the makeup, in a too-big shirt that hung off her frame.

“Will you stay with me?” she asked. Angela didn’t have to ask what she meant, she knew just by the note of hesitancy in Amélie’s voice. Her smile, though, was warm and convincing. “It’ll be nice not to be alone,” she added. Angela agreed; it had been a while since she'd slept beside someone.

“Alright.” She didn't want to question herself over it, to overthink it.

Amélie slipped past her into the bathroom, and Angela went on inside the room Amélie had just exited. It felt just a bit smaller than the bedroom in her own apartment, but also had more furniture in it—two bedside tables, a larger dresser, a bigger closet, a chair in the corner. She sat on the bed, up against the headboard, and closed her eyes. The world spun just a little behind her eyelids.

The sound of the door swinging open, of the light switch clicking off, of delicate footsteps against the hardwood floor, alerted her to Amélie’s return. She felt the bed dip from her weight as she climbed in on the other side. She opened her eyes to see Amélie lying on her side, head propped up by one arm against the mattress, facing her. The covers were pulled up about her hips and her fingers played with the double lining of the top sheet.

“Do you need water?”

“I had some, while I was up,” she said. She dropped her head down onto the pillow and looked properly tired, even though her voice was all alight with life when she teased, “Thanks for looking after me, Docteur.”

Angela lifted the covers to burrow under them, too. She lay on the mattress mirroring Amélie, close enough that their knees brushed for a second as she shuffled, and their hands might as well have been touching. Amélie stared at her, perhaps a bit too openly, but she took it as quiet invitation to stare back. Something about the gentle lighting in the room made Amélie look pretty where she never would have thought to find beauty.

The lines of her face were much softer without any makeup to tamper with them. And even with dark streaks circling up beneath her eyes, testament to her exhaustion after pouring so much effort into a single day, her gaze was warm as ever. Her bottom lip was stained just slightly red from the wine. Her hair spidered out against her pillow and framed her face in tendrils. The fabric of her shirt fell naturally against her chest, clung to her breasts by its weight alone, and bunched up where it had ridden up at the dip of her waist. Amélie was always beautiful, even when she looked messy like this—Angela thought, in fact, that there was something particularly alluring about seeing her less than put together.

She dared reach forward to brush a loose strand of her hair back behind her ear. Her touch lingered against her cheek so that she held her face for a moment. Her heart beat strong against her chest when Amélie reached up to trail her fingers up the length of her arm. She stopped at the inside of her wrist and feathered her touch there, brushing against soft skin, before circling loosely to hold her.

Amélie looked at her, at her eyes, and at her lips, and at all the soft details of Angela’s face. “Careful,” she murmured, and it was so quiet that it sounded rather like she was saying it to herself.

Angela looked down and away, and slowly each drew their hold away from the other. Amélie reached for her hand, though, after they’d separated, to link their fingers. It felt familiar. Angela squeezed her hand.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“For what, _chérie_?” Amélie pushed herself off the pillow. Angela felt her heart flutter just at the soothing quality of her voice. She stayed quiet, because she was sure Amélie knew the answer to her own question.

“Can I turn off the light?” she asked after enough silence had passed.

“Mhmm,” Angela hummed.

Amélie disentwined their hands and leaned away from her to reach the switch hanging off the edge of the nightstand, and then the room went dark with a sharp click. The sheets rustled as she rejoined Angela, bundled beneath the covers.

“ _Bonne nuit_ ,” she said, just above a whisper.

 _“Guet Nacht_.”

Resting at opposite ends of the bed felt much too cold, but meeting at the middle, as they had moments ago, presented with the opposite problem. They shuffled for a while, neither finding asleep, listening to cars rushing past at street level a few floors down. Until finally Angela found the press of Amélie’s back against her own, and the warmth of it stilled them both. Their breathing slowed and deepened as they drifted off together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's the norm to paint Amélie as kind of very... sexually self aware? But I thought it'd be interesting to sort of try and subvert that to a degree. Hopefully you guys think it works.  
> I hesitated for a while on how to execute the last scene/section of this chapter (I actually ended up rewriting it, which is smthing I very rarely do w/ fic tbh). My line of thinking in ultimately choosing to write Amélie this way is: she's young, was married even younger, and maybe, as a result, is only having an identity crisis now because she's finally met a woman who, on top of being slightly older and more comfortable with being gay, does more than just spark her interest in passing. Leave it to a smart, successful, beautiful lesbian.
> 
> tl;dr Amélie got married young and Angela has triggered a bit of a gay panic


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, it's almost been a month since I last updated! I've been pretty busy juggling the start of a new semester and prospective job stuff... but hopefully that all starts to die down a little.  
> I really want to get back into a rhythm of regular updates, and I'm super excited to move on to bigger plot points that'll shake up the storyline (which should be very soon). Apologies if this chapter's a bit unpolished--I haven't written in a while.

Angela didn’t know whether Gabe had anyone to call family in the States—she didn’t feel close enough to ask, and he was good at steering conversation away from topics too personal, anyway—but he certainly didn’t have anyone outside of Overwatch to come home to in Zurich. It had come as no surprise, then, when she’d learned he was responsible for instating the annual holiday party. The organization had no shortage of Christmas orphans happy to spend the night together. Family was made of those who cared to share their time. Angela had come to learn as much in all her years without one.

Members of Blackwatch, no doubt because they so often had to keep to themselves within working hours, formed one of the most tight-knit of groups out of the many at Overwatch. But there were exceptions, and Angela thought her relationship with Jesse was one of them. They’d become friends in a matter of weeks after her recruitment—it would have been hard not to get to know each other considering how often Jesse visited the medical ward. Over a broken shin, she’d learned that they’d been born hardly a month apart. Over a piece of shrapnel lodged under his ribs, that he’d been orphaned young, too. He’d told her stories from ten years ago, when, while she’d been well on her way to earning a medical degree, he’d been knee deep in arms trafficking.

And still the world had turned such that they were carpooling to Overwatch headquarters together for a party that evening. Angela waited in her car and watched as he locked his front door behind him. Even after all these years, something about seeing Jesse in anything remotely formal never failed to make her smile. He pulled the passenger-side door open and slammed it shut behind him once he’d hopped in.

“Thanks for the lift, Angie.”

“I don’t think I remember the last time I saw you without a hat,” she said in greeting. She reached over to ruffle his hair, intentionally messing it up. 

Jesse batted her hand away, humphed something about ‘Gabe’ and ‘looking presentable’ under his breath, and then used his preoccupation with readjusting the seat as an excuse not to offer the comment further answer. Angela rolled her eyes but she was smiling.

“What about you? They said this one wasn’t gonna be that formal.”

“It’s not—this isn’t formal-formal,” she said defensively. “It’s casually formal.”

Angela pointedly looked away to avoid his stare, though she could feel it on her regardless. Sure, maybe she’d put on a better dress than she usually bothered with for Overwatch-internal events like this one. That tonight would be the first time she’d see Amélie again since her trip to Paris was pure coincidence. She wondered, briefly, if Jesse was so observant. If he’d tied one invisible dot to the next and figured it all out—but no, that was impossible, because the only people who knew of her recent Paris visit were herself and Amélie. Whatever it was he was thinking on, Jesse let it go as he finally looked away, out the window.

“Oh,” he said, like he’d suddenly remembered something. One hand disappeared inside his jacket and he dug through a concealed pocket there for a few seconds before pulling away again with two cigars pinched between his fingers. Angela heard his grin more than she saw it. “Brought one for you, too. Merry Christmas.”

She scrunched her nose in disapproval. “I swear—if you light one of those in my car, you’d better not cry about where I end up shoving it to put it out.”

“Didn’t know you were that kind of doctor.”

Angela coughed out a short laugh.

“Don’t worry,” he assured her, hiding the cigars back where they’d come from. “The second one’s for Gabe—Nicaraguan, said he wanted to try one.”

As Jesse started going over the finer points of cigar making, Angela’s attention strayed this way and that, mostly to linger on thoughts of Amélie. The few days following her visit had seen a stretch of silence between them longer than any they’d had since they became close friends. But then, slowly, messages rolled in, and phone calls rang through every so often, until they reentered a familiar balance. They never really mentioned what had happened the night of the performance, and Angela didn’t mind terribly if it meant reinstating the comfortable rhythm that was uniquely theirs. Sometimes, looking back on those memories felt like digging through fragments of an old dream.

The turnout at the party this year seemed smaller to Angela than it had in previous ones, but that was hardly something to complain about. She spotted Amélie quickly enough across the room—she and Gérard, both tall and with a certain poise about them, had a way of quietly standing out in a crowd—but let Jesse lead her off to greet other friends before she decided to breach the space between them.

When she tried to sneak off under the guise of getting some wine, Reinhardt wrapped one arm around her shoulders and tugged her with him to pour them both beers instead. She stood beside him holding a glass she was certain held almost two and a half times a regular drink, and wondered if he hadn’t brought them to the party himself. 

“Reinhardt, don’t tell me you’re already drunk,” a welcome voice interrupted. Ana stepped between them and gave Angela a merciful smile.

“All relative! Some of us just have catching up to do— _Frau Doktor_ ,” he gestured towards Angela and the near-full glass she had in hand with a broad smile. Ana rolled her eyes and it made Angela laugh.

“Mind if I take him off your hands, Angela?” she asked with a wink and a hand placed against the inside of Reinhardt’s arm, ready to lead him away already.

“He’s all yours.”

With only a couple protests and a few comments thrown back her way in German, he was pulled to the other end of the room, where a small dance floor had been arranged. The sight of him inadvertently creating space around himself, broad as he was, entertained her for a minute more before her eyes returned to roving around the room. It wasn’t so densely packed that it should be hard to see—

“Looking for someone?”

That low, familiar timbre made her heart jump in her chest and a slow smile spread across her face. She only turned her head slightly, just enough to look out of the corner of her eye at Amélie standing right beside her.

“Mm,” she hummed. “Tall, pretty, dark hair…” She was smirking now and she could feel Amélie’s gaze on her, so she moved to face her properly—to appreciate the details of her expression. God, she hadn’t seen her in so long and she was more beautiful than she’d remembered. Her throat felt dry so she shifted her attention away, lower, but following the neckline of her dress and the shape the fabric took over her form proved not to be of much help. “You’ve met her before, certainly? Amari’s daughter?”

Amélie’s expression was unreadable for an instant, but the way her eyes glowed—amused, Angela had come to learn—betrayed her. She humphed, a small sound accompanied by the subtle pursing of her lips. “I can’t say I’ve seen her yet,” she answered.

It was quiet between them for a few seconds, then, until Amélie looked down at where Angela’s hands were softly tapping against the glass she held between them. “I didn’t know you liked beer _that_ much,” she teased. Angela was mortified for a second as she realized she hadn’t thought to set down the massive glass Reinhardt had poured her.

“I don’t—well, I do like beer, but—”

Amélie’s soft laugh cut her off. “I know, _chérie_. I saw him pour it for you.”

Angela rolled her eyes. “Well thanks for coming to my rescue when I needed it.”

“The Captain had it under control, no?” She nodded vaguely towards the other side of the room, where Reinhardt and Ana still stood together on the dance floor. “Here,” Amélie said, and she reached to take the beer from Angela’s hands, breaching for the first time that night some invisible barrier that had had them not touching, not hugging when they’d reunited, not even kissing each other’s cheeks in greeting. Their fingers brushed feather light together. She put the glass down on the nearest table, and then held Angela’s arm gently to drag her away from where they stood. “Let’s get some wine, hmm?” 

She watched as Amélie poured her a glass “It is a shame Fareeha isn’t here,” Angela thought aloud, genuinely. “I hope everything’s alright.”

“You’re worried something’s happened?”

“No, not like that,” she clarified quickly. “She just… hasn’t been on the best of terms with some of Overwatch’s members lately.” She didn’t bother being more specific than that. Her aim wasn’t to gossip.

“Ah,” Amélie said, as though that explained things perfectly. A full glass of wine found its way into Angela’s hand. “Well, let’s hope she’s spending the night in good company nonetheless.”

“Hmm.” It wasn’t any of her business, but she thought that if she still had family around, she’d try everything in her power not to let arguments keep them apart, especially not during the holidays. The soft clink of Amélie’s glass against her own brought her attention back to the present moment, and she looked up to meet her eyes.

“ _Santé_ ,” she said with a small smile.

“ _Zum Wohl_.”

She raised the glass to her lips to taste the wine. It coated her tongue, semi-dry, and warmed her already as it passed down her throat. Something about the moment reminded her of the last time she and Amélie had drunk together, but before she could dwell on the thought too long, a clear voice cut through the baseline hubbub of the party.

“Hey, Doc!” Lena stepped out of the crowd—hair slicked up as always, in a deep red button down, wearing the now-customary chronal harness that whirred a soft blue light against her chest—to face the both of them. But then she paused, smile dropping for a fraction of a second, and asked, “I’m not interrupting something, am I?”

“Not at all,” Angela assured her a bit too quickly. “Lena, this is Amélie Lacroix. Amélie, this is Lena Oxton. Not sure if you’ve met.”

“You’re the pilot, aren’t you?” Amélie asked, trying to bring something to memory.

“Sure am—ex-pilot, I guess.” Lena paused to knock against her harness. “Not fit for active duty quite yet. According to some doctors on base.” She looked to Angela for a reaction, teasing.

“Patience is a virtue,” she answered. “You know I’ll clear you as soon as I can.”

“Speaking of, actually—Winston and I wanted to show you something!”

“What, right now?” she asked before she could help it. She wasn’t sure she’d even seen Winston at the party yet, hard as it was to miss a gorilla walking about.

“It’ll take like five minutes tops, promise.” The enthusiasm in her voice was hard to say no to. “If you’re not busy, obviously.”

Angela sighed, but she was smiling. “Seems I’m being pulled away,” she said, sounding a bit apologetic as she looked to Amélie.

“Have fun,” she said easily, and when their eyes met, Angela suddenly wished very strongly that Lena hadn’t come to interrupt them. But the look Amélie was giving her seemed to say that they certainly weren’t done speaking for the night. What was it she’d just told Lena?—Patience is a virtue.

“I’ll be back.”

“Nice meeting you, Amélie.” Lena was already getting ready to leave as she turned with a small wave of her hand.

Amélie nodded and smiled at the both of them, and then winked once Lena wasn’t looking her way anymore. Angela had almost forgotten all the little ways Amélie could make her stomach flip over the smallest, vaguely suggestive actions. Of course she knew enough about the body to tell just why butterflies bloomed in her gut, but all the flutters never felt any less arresting for it. That Amélie hardly ever seemed nervous herself, rarely revealed when or how she was affected, only seemed to make things worse.

* * *

 

Angela followed Lena across the length of the room, past the doorway, and down the corridor just outside, without much of an explanation as to why Lena was so excited that she practically skipped the whole way there. Winston was waiting on the other side of the doors leading to an old training room. Together they showed her what Angela could only describe as breaking all laws of space and time as she knew them.

“Do you think Commander Morrison will let us implement it?” he asked her.

“I can’t imagine Jack passing up an opportunity to weaponize anything he might be able to,” she answered flatly.

Winston told her it’d been pure accident—that he’d called Lena in just yesterday, to check up on the chronal device, when suddenly she’d blinked halfway to the other end of his lab. It happened seemingly at will. One second she was one place, and the next, she was completely at another of her own volition.

“You don’t feel like you’re going to… fall back in there, do you?” Angela asked, still wary.

“Not at all. This thing really keeps me tied down,” she said, gesturing at the accelerator. “I guess it’s just loose enough in places… No harm in bending the rules a little, right?”

“This isn’t my field, but that certainly doesn’t _sound_ like the way space-time works.” Winston’s expression, when she turned to look at him, suggested he didn’t think that was how it was supposed to work, either.

“I’m in the process of figuring it out,” he assured her, though he didn’t sound totally convinced himself.

“It’s going to take much longer to clear you for active duty now,” Angela turned to Lena again. “You realize that?”

“Well it’s not like I have much of a choice as far as that goes.”

“It’ll be good to monitor you more closely from now on, too—just in case this starts affecting your physiology.”

“I told her to try and hold off on blinking around like that until we showed you,” Winston said. “I don’t want anything to go wrong, and if anything does… Having you around, Doctor Ziegler, puts my mind at ease.”

“Oh, come on,” Lena said. “I feel great.”

And she blinked again—once, twice, and then Angela couldn’t tell where she’d disappeared off to.

“Boo.”

The small voice right at her back made her jump. She laughed it off. Whatever this was, it was one scientific marvel on top of another. That it was rather unexplainable made it just as frightening as it was exciting.

“We didn’t want to step away from the party for too long,” Winston said. “We just thought it best to show you as soon as possible.” 

“Don’t worry about it. This is important,” Angela said, eyes falling to the blue lights dancing concentrically at Lena’s chest. She knew some agents would be thrilled at the prospect of being able to warp time on the battlefield, but she swore she’d do everything to make sure Lena’s condition was stable before they threw her into combat.

* * *

 

Nearly an hour went by between Angela’s return to the hall and her crossing paths with Amélie again, though with a couple glasses of wine to help pass the time, it hardly felt so long.

“Last offer, darlin’,” Jesse told her as he walked by her on his way to the balcony. He held up the same cigar he’d shown her in the car, waving it in her direction. Apparently the look she shot him was answer enough, because he burst out laughing as he tucked it away again. “Sure you don’t wanna sit with us outside, anyway?”

“In this weather?” It was just below zero out last she’d checked. Even having known Swiss winters all her life, the thought of stepping outside at the moment was less than inviting. She wondered how Jesse managed to tolerate it so well, seeing as it wasn’t so long ago that he’d started living in places where snow touched the earth.

“You know where to find us if you change your mind.”

Gabe was standing over at the door to the balcony, waiting for him, along with a few other Blackwatch agents. Angela watched him go until Amélie, for the second time that night, managed to sneak up beside her.

“I don’t know how they can stand… standing in the cold right now,” she said, looking over at where the group was now heading outside, and Angela noticed, then, that Gérard was among them.

“That’s exactly what I said.”

“They’ve all probably had enough to drink not to feel it,” Amélie thought. And then she sighed—a slightly forced, performative sigh—and Angela didn’t have to wonder long what that scheming smile cast her way meant. “A shame I have no one to dance with now. I’ve been wanting to all night.”

“Well, you’re in luck,” she answered quickly. “There are dozens of people to choose from. I’m sure you’ll make anyone’s night just by asking.” She watched Amélie’s smile falter for just a second and it proved a considerable effort not to laugh.

“ _Allez_ ,” she said, taking her hand, casual as ever. “Let me make your night, then.”

Angela thought she’d promised herself that she was done starting fires she evidently couldn’t tame. She huffed, looking away, ignoring the heat she felt rise to her face. “I have two left feet.”

“All the more reason to practice, Docteur.” She was smiling, tugging her gently along, and it was so hard not to smile back, not to be sucked in.

“I’m serious—I don’t even know the basics,” she insisted, but she could hear the way the conviction in her voice died on her tongue with every step Amélie coaxed her forward, with every word that left her lips.

“I’ll teach you.” She sounded even more excited than before at the idea.

The hall wasn’t as crowded as it had been earlier on in the night, but the people that remained were lively enough and drunk enough that a pair of dancers settled at the very edge of the room, where large windows provided a view of Zurich all alight, would hardly be paid any mind. Amélie seemed content with the bit of floor space she’d found them.

“I’m going to teach you an eight step dance,” she told her. She paused to finish the glass of wine she held in her hand, and walked to the closest table to set it down. Angela followed suit.

“Shouldn’t we start with… the box, or something?”

“This will be more fun, I promise.”

Angela sighed, mentally bracing herself. “I’m going to make a fool out of myself. You do this for a living.”

“I’m actually not very familiar with ballroom dancing,” Amélie admitted, but then amended her statement with a smile that was hardly modest, “Well, comparatively." 

“Just… show me what to do.” Angela stepped forward, closed the distance between them so they were standing face to face, preparing herself for the worst. But Amélie only took one of her hands in her own, and then moved so that they stood side by side.

“We’re not dancing together yet,” she explained. “You have to learn the steps first.”

“I’m not sober enough for this,” Angela muttered under her breath. Though maybe learning on a few drinks would be a good thing—would help loosen her movements. Amélie’s thumb brushed over the back of her hand as though to reassure her, to encourage her. She found herself smiling. She had always meant to learn to dance, but the opportunity hadn’t really ever presented itself quite as invitingly as it did now. The prospect was growing on her, tamping down the nervous dread at the pit of her stomach.

“We’ll do just five steps first.” Amélie looked down at their feet and Angela took it as indication to loosely mimic her posture. “Step, one,” she started, only to stop in her tracks when she realized Angela wasn’t following.

“Sorry,” she said quickly.

“One,” Amélie counted again as Angela stepped forward to meet her, and then she went on slowly, “Two. Back, three. Four. And cross, five.”

“That’s not too bad,” Angela said with newfound confidence.

“Let’s do it a couple more times, at least, before I show you the rest.”

She nodded, and they stepped back to assume their starting positions, hands still linked together. Once Angela seemed comfortable enough with the motions of it all, Amélie taught her the last three steps to tie off the sequence. They were easier than the first five, and she soon felt ready to marry all that she’d learned.

“Cross the other way,” Amélie corrected her gently when she messed it up. Angela’s brows were knit together in concentration, and she nodded once before trying the sequence over again. After a few more successful repetitions, Amélie shifted to take both of her hands, directing them to face each other.

“Ready to try together?” she asked. Her eyes were smiling again. Their deep, rich color always made Angela feel warm. She nodded and dared take a step closer. “Hand in mine,” she instructed, and readjusted her hold against her palm. “The other on my shoulder.”

Once Angela’s hand had found its place, Amélie’s free one wrapped around to settle high on her back. The touch was light against her skin, bare under Amélie’s fingers thanks to the cut of her dress, and it made the hairs at the back of her neck stand on end.

“Can I lead?” Angela asked, getting ready all of a sudden to trade positions now that the idea had hit her. But Amélie’s hold on her tightened just the slightest bit to keep her from shifting. She laughed, light and chiming, and the sound made Angela’s heart flutter even as she frowned at her request being denied.

“I’d say yes, but I already taught you the follow’s steps.”

Angela huffed, but the answer seemed to appease her.

“I’ll have to ask you to bear with me for a bit, actually,” Amélie told her. “I’ve never really danced the lead’s part before.”

Angela nodded, waiting, wanting to bring her foot out for the first step to get started. She hesitated. “Do I—?”

“Just let me guide the general movement,” Amélie instructed. She took a step back, and Angela moved forward to fill the space she left in her wake, guided by the gentle press of the hand at her back. Amélie counted softly under her breath, “ _Un, deux, trois, quatre…”_

“You keep… slowing down and speeding up suddenly,” Angela complained when she misstepped, causing their momentum to halt.

“Sorry, I’m counting in my head,” she apologized sincerely. “Some of the steps are longer than others.” They readjusted the hold they had on each other’s hands and centered themselves once more over the little space of floor they’d carved out for their dancing. Angela concentrated on the minute motions of her feet, straining to hear Amélie’s whispered counting so that she could keep up better. 

“ _Regarde-moi, chérie_.” Her voice was so gentle, and Angela complied without a second thought, looking up to meet her eyes. “You’re paying too much attention to your feet. Stand up straight… just look at me. Pay attention to how we move together.”

Angela tried. But staring at Amélie so closely proved a new distraction all together. She was certain she was tripping over her own feet far more often now, though it didn’t seem to take them so long to find their rhythm again every time she messed up. Amélie had stopped counting, and the intensity with which she fixated her made Angela turn her own gaze away more than once—only to find her lips, or her neck, or the delicate line of her collarbone. She gave up on ignoring the erratic thrum of her pulse, and tried to use it to her advantage instead, to count time between her steps.

“I can’t believe what you were on about—you’re a beautiful dancer.”

Angela couldn’t tell whether her cheeks were flushed. It had all started feeling much too warm in the small space between them for a while now. “Learning from the best helps, I think.”

Amélie smiled at the compliment, wide enough to show teeth. And then she wrapped her arm tighter around Angela’s back, moving her hand from its position just at her shoulder blade to settle near her waist instead. With their cheeks brushing close together, Angela could smell the delicately herbal smell she’d come to associate with Amélie, could feel the way her breathing stirred the air close to her ear.

They held each other in an embrace so close that their bodies pressed together every time the momentum of the dance led Angela against Amélie’s chest. Their legs moved in time and she felt the warmth of their thighs close together more than a few times. Amélie’s fingers twitched where they held her by the waist, as though she couldn’t decide whether to hold her tighter, or to shift her hand down to the small of her back. Ultimately, she settled for stilling her hand where it was, just brushing her thumb against the soft skin exposed by the dress’s open back every now and then. It sent little shock-like shivers down Angela’s spine every time. 

Their fingers laced together an instant before they readjusted their grip, and the pace of their dancing, which had steadily picked up speed, slowed down naturally again. The measured steps Amélie had taught her devolved into something much less structured, a lazy sway that had them pacing in loose circles. Amélie unwrapped her arm from behind her back, but still held her close, a hair’s breadth from being chest to chest. Her hand found a home at the dip of her waist.

Angela had wondered for so long how everything that had happened—the incident in Paris—would affect them and the way they danced in each other’s orbits. But tonight, their interactions were almost all the same, if not stronger than before. Familiar, though with much more hanging in the silence, because what was unspoken was no longer unnamed. It made her happy that she hadn’t lost Amélie, but something in her felt frustrated, angry—so much more upset over their circumstances than she’d ever been. Was this really the solution—to pretend as though nothing had happened?

Angela felt the urge to lean her head down against her shoulder and nestle close to her neck, suddenly tired. Something in her body language must have betrayed her, because Amélie leaned her head against hers for a moment, so they could rest their weight against each other. Angela’s heart beat so loudly in her chest, she almost wondered if Amélie could hear it, too. 

“You’re being cruel, you know that?” she told her, hushed. There was no venom in her voice, though, and there was a disconnect between her words and the tone she chose to speak them with.

Amélie pulled back so that their eyes could meet again, and looked almost offended for a second before she studied Angela more closely. One corner of her mouth twitched up, something of a smile, if it could be called as much. “I didn’t force you to dance with me, Angela,” she said, and hearing her name pass her lips—she really didn’t say it all that often—practically made Angela forget all feelings of upset. “It does, in fact, take two to tango.”

She almost snorted, and the poorly bitten-back laugh that came out instead dissolved some of the tension that had fallen over them. So that was what she’d taught her to dance. “If you orchestrated all this just to make that joke…”

Amélie rolled her eyes. “Right, because we’d all go as far as you would for the sake of wordplay.” She smiled properly again now, and Angela found it was contagious. “I’m pretty proud I remembered that saying, actually. You know I’m not very good at remembering expressions in English.”

“Congratulations on the pun,” she deadpanned.

Amélie’s fingers squeezed against her side and Angela almost broke away from her in surprise, laughing at the way it tickled. And then it all stopped before she could tell her to cut it out. Amélie looked far too smug, and the gleam in her eyes when they met Angela’s again—there was something incautiously curious about it, something that stirred butterflies low in Angela’s stomach.

“Ladies,” a voice interrupted, just after the sound of someone clearing their throat.

That the intrusion was so sudden, so jarring, made Angela realize to what extent they’d each been lost in a world comprised solely of the other. Their wandering dance slowed to a stop, and she turned her head to find Ana just several feet off from where they stood. She felt Amélie’s hand drop away from her waist, and their fingers drifted apart as they let go of each other.

“Sorry to interrupt,” she said. “I thought I might borrow you for moment, Angela.”

“Is everything alright?” Amélie couldn't help but ask, given the absence of any warmth in Ana’s tone.

“Oh, just fine, just fine,” she answered to quickly dispel any concern. “It’ll only take a second.”

“Sure,” Angela said. She looked back at Amélie as she stepped away, smiling as though to tell her she’d be back, and followed Ana off to wherever it was she was planning on taking her.

They stopped finally in a corner at the opposite end of the room, where a couple of couches had been pushed back to make more space for a dance floor. Ana half-sat against one of the armrests, arms crossed, and Angela felt a weight drop over her chest when she looked up at her. That was the kind of look she got before a talking-to. 

“How are you enjoying yourself tonight?”

She swallowed—knew the tone was falsely casual, and that no matter what answer she gave, the end result would be the same.

“Just fine,” she answered shortly, wary.

“I could tell.”

That sparked something in Angela—she already knew what this was going to be about, and she didn’t want to talk about it. “I fail to see how this is related in any way, shape, or form to my job,” she said, implying it wasn’t Ana’s place to mother her, even though, in many ways, she was the closest person to a mother figure that she’d had in a long time.

“Oh, come on, Angela,” she said, and her tone was less hard now. “You think I want to be having this conversation, too?”

“Well, obviously, since you pulled me away—”

“And aren’t you glad I did, before Gérard walked back into the room?” Ana said. “You certainly would be if you had any clue as to the way you two looked just now.”

Angela looked away, trying hard to keep her expression as impassive as possible, but she could feel the way her brows were drawing together. “It isn’t any of your business.” She knew it sounded stupid, childish, the second she said it.

“It _is_ my business,” she told her. “It’s my business that Overwatch has been combusting internally lately. It’s my business that our best medic is one step away from tearing her working relationship with one of our most valuable Blackwatch agents to shreds.” Angela was quiet, but she dared look at her again, so Ana went on, “I feel like I’m the only one trying to hold this place together, sometimes. I already have to keep you and O’deorain at opposite ends of headquarters whenever I can—”

“She has nothing to do with this.” The implication that they needed to be policed, kept apart, was condescending, anyways. Moira was a separate matter entirely, though, and their relationship wasn’t nearly as disruptive as Ana made it sound at the moment.

“I’m just saying—all this can’t be worth destroying your relationship with Gérard,” she said. “I care about the both of you. And I know you care about each other—for god’s sake, Angela, the man’s your friend.”

“You don’t understand,” she said. Her frustration was properly bleeding through her voice now.

“I think _you_ don’t understand that there’s no way this ends well—especially not for you,” Ana told her. “I don’t know what you’re hoping for, what delusions you have, but they’ve been married for years now. And you’ve known her—what? Months.”

That made Angela snap. She turned her head to look Ana straight on. “You think I don’t know that?” She hated how upset she sounded when she said it. “You think I don’t know—” She had to stop herself there, and looked down at her feet. She knew it all better than anyone, though she tried not to think about it.

Ana was silent for a minute, evidently conscious now that she’d said the wrong thing entirely. Before she could apologize, before she could say anything at all, Angela went on.

“You have the wrong idea, anyways,” she said softly. “We’re not—Amélie wouldn’t do that to him. She loves him too much.” It hurt to say it aloud.

Ana laughed drily—not a real laugh. “Have you seen the way she looks at you? Like she’ll drown if she stops. Like she would drag you off to the nearest vacant room if she could.” Angela flushed at that, if only over hearing Ana, of all people, imply what it was she was implying.

“We’re friends,” she said finally, weakly. She wanted the conversation to end. She wished Ana had never pulled her away from Amélie, that she hadn’t ruined the wonderful mood the dancing and the wine and the carelessness had put her in. She didn’t want to be thinking about all these things, problems she’d already thought on time and time again on her own. “That’s not going to change.”

“Just be careful, Angela. I don’t want to see you hurt.”

She was looking away, staring off at nothing in particular on the other side of the room. Ana’s hand came to rest against her arm, a small attempt to comfort. Angela took a breath and let it out on a sigh. “Can I go now?” she asked.

It felt as though minutes went by before Ana withdrew her touch, and then she answered, “Of course.”

By the time Angela found Amélie again, Gérard had rejoined her. Jesse was there, too, and even though he stunk of beer and cigar smoke, she found the weight of his arm around her shoulders comforting when he tried to pull her into a half-hug upon her return.

It was only on their way out of the party a while later that she and Amélie found themselves alone again, when Amélie stopped to pull her off to the side for just a second.

“Is everything alright?” she asked.

“Yeah, of course.”

“You just seemed—I don’t know, distraught, a little bit. After she pulled you away.”

Angela shook her head. “I’m fine, really. It was just… work stuff.” Amélie stared at her an instant, and Angela was sure she was about to call her out on lying. Instead, she received a small smile, not the kind that made her heart beat a mile a minute—though all of her smiles, arguably, had an effect close to that—but one meant to comfort silently.

“Okay,” she said softly. “Call me, if you want to talk about it. And you know I’ll be here in Zurich for another week, at least.”

Angela reached for her hand, took it in her own, and squeezed it gently. “Thanks,” she said. “And thanks for teaching me to dance tonight.”

Now, her smile reverted to one of those that was utterly contagious. Angela felt her hold onto her hand more tightly. “You had fun, then?”

The conversation with Ana be damned. She’d deal with whatever sat between her and Amélie as soon as it became a concrete problem—not that it ever had to come to that. Every moment that she shared herself with Amélie, and she with her, was too precious and happy not to outweigh the cautions of a third party. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t debated the issue with her conscience frequently and at length.

Angela would rather let her love for Amélie bloom and grow, even if without aim, than tear out its roots and let it wither.  

“I did,” she said. “Very much.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An update! Sorry for the long wait, guys. I also apologize for not answering the majority of the comments on the last chapter, I usually am pretty good about that. I read every one of them and can't thank you enough for the motivation they generate. 
> 
> This one's a bit on the shorter side—enjoy! And here's to the next one not taking half a year to write ;)

Angela sighed, a soft sound that saw her shoulders slump as she hung up the phone. She’d half-expected it, really, considering the holiday.

“Nothing good?” Amélie occupied the passenger seat beside her. She leaned against the center armrest with her chin propped in her hand, staring, waiting for an answer.

Angela shook her head. “They can’t make it. The hospital’s a mess right now, apparently.”

“But they have off, no?”

“Pretty much everyone is on call New Year’s Eve. You wouldn’t believe the amount of people who come in with their hands burned, lacerated, fingers blow off. Worse, it’s the face.” Angela caught Amélie’s gaze, unwavering, and finished quickly, “I’m sure the ER is busy, is all.”

No matter how infrequently she managed to see her friends from her time at the hospital, New Year’s, and other celebrations, thankfully marked perfect opportunities for get-togethers. A doctor’s schedule was forgiving compared to the hours Overwatch demanded of her, though. Angela knew there was nothing else to blame for her drifting from them in the past few years than her current position. Fate seemingly wasn’t on her side tonight, as far as all that went.

But an excuse for a night alone with Amélie was never unwelcome. And it would be safe, this way—wandering outside, with no closed doors and wine filled glasses to help along slip-ups.

“I’m glad I’m here with you,” Amélie echoed Angela’s sentiment once they’d stepped out of the car. She joined her on the sidewalk and linked their arms loosely together, like it was the easiest thing, and steered them in the direction of the lights at the lakeside off ahead.

“And you were so worried about imposing,” Angela teased.

Gérard had been the one to mention to Angela, three days ago, that Blackwatch would have him collared through the New Year. Delicate situations a couple of boarders away always demanded attention at the most inopportune times. Angela had immediately extended her an invitation, which Amélie had accepted only after reassurance that _no, she wouldn’t be intruding,_ and _no, she wasn’t inviting her out of pity_.

Angela wondered if Amélie had ever had to spend a holiday, or a birthday, alone—if she’d ever wandered into crowds or festivals like this one, just to feel the presence of others when she had no one but herself. If not, she was glad to have spared her a first.

Little stands, all of odd heights and mismatched architecture, together made a massive village where they lined the basin. The moon was white and bright enough to cast light onto the sailboats docked just a ways away. But the crowd was mostly lit by the yellow of lamp posts and the stringed bulbs stretched between them.

A band, one among many they would pass over the course of the night, was playing on a small stage Angela could hardly see, given the crowd surrounding it. She was glad Amélie had latched on to her arm before; it made it easy to find her hand and lace their fingers together, so that they could make it past the mass of people unseparated.

“Do you want a beer?” she asked as they approached a quieter drink stand.

“Sure.”

Angela ordered from the bar, and they carefully took their drinks so as not to let them spill over their hands. Amélie was smiling to herself, like she’d just thought of something funny, and it was the kind of smile that made Angela’s heart beat faster when their eyes met. She almost let the beer dribble over the rim of her cup.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing—I just thought we should toast,” Amélie said. “To being ditched on New Year’s.”

Angela rolled her eyes, but she was fighting a smile as she raised her glass, too.

“… And still managing to spend it in lovely company, of course,” Amélie added, not without a wink. Angela was glad to take a sip off the foamy top of her drink, if only to distract them both from the reaction Amélie roused in her.

The air was cold against the hand she held her cup by, and she was glad to be able to stuff it back into her jacket pocket once she’d finished her drink. She could feel the air start to numb her cheeks, and when she turned to look at Amélie, noticed that the tip of her nose and the edges of her ears had started to pink.

Before being able to ask if she wanted to head into a club or restaurant to warm up for a minute, Amélie, having thought on something, started slowly, “I was wondering…”

“Hmm?”

“Though, maybe I shouldn’t ask.”

Curiosity gnawed at Angela now. “Well, you already brought it up, so might as well.” She tried a small smile to coax her along. She doubted there was anything Amélie could ask that would offend her, though there were certainly things she could say to take her off guard. Angela remembered, for a moment, what she’d asked her back in Paris. She wondered if Amélie remembered it so clearly, or if the wine had fudged things.

“I was just wondering—ever since Christmas, I guess, I’ve been wondering. Overwatch, they’re like your family, no?” There was a note of hesitation in her voice, so uncharacteristic, but she pressed on. “Even though you’re from here, you spend your holidays and all that with them.”

Ah, so that was what she’d been thinking on. Angela smiled, because despite Amélie’s apparent struggle over asking, she didn’t mind speaking on these things. She was used to the question by now, and she didn’t mind sharing with Amélie. It came from a place of caring, not morbid curiosity.

“You’re right. Overwatch is probably the closest thing I have to family right now,” she explained easily. “My parents died when I was young—very beginning of the Omnic Crisis. I jumped between foster families for a little while, but the orphanage was my home, mostly, growing up. With so many people in Overwatch who don’t have much, either, it’s easy to build a little family, I guess. Not to mention the kind of work we do tends to bring us close quickly.”

“That’s good—I’m glad, I mean, that they can be that for you.”

Angela shrugged. “You learn to make your own family when you don’t have one. It’s not so bad.”

“I’m sorry if I brought up something unpleasant,” Amélie said, still cautious.

"You’re fine, really. A quarter of a century is plenty of time to get used to talking about it.”

That seemed to come as a surprise. “That long? So you don’t remember your parents?”

“Not well. My mother more than my father—sometimes I’m not sure if the glimpses my mind gives me are real memories or just… dreams. Things I’ve half made up from looking at pictures or … watching other kids with their moms. I don’t know.” She could see her mother’s face, warm and glowing, framed by hair as gold as her own. She knew the feel of her skin and the shape of her hands and the pattern on the pretty red dress she often wore. She thought she knew the sound of her voice. “She was a doctor, too.”

“I’m sure she’d be proud of you.”

“I think so. I hope so, at least,” Angela said, smiling.

It was quiet for a minute, during which Amélie fell into thought again. She cleared her throat, finally, and admitted, “I lost my parents when I was nineteen—not to turn the conversation on me, but it just made me think. I wondered sometimes if it would have been easier if I’d lost them younger, or… I don’t know. But there’s never an easy age to go through that.”

Angela was somewhat unsurprised to learn as much about Amélie. It added up with so many of the little things she’d come to know about her. “Have you found family in work, too?” she asked. “With the people you’ve met through dance and all that? You seem fairly close with the girls in the corps de ballet.”

“They’re great friends,” she agreed. “And I have Gérard. He’s my family more than anyone else now. We started dating not long after my parents passed, and he’s been there ever since. His family is wonderful. I get along well with his sisters, and his mother… she is a kind woman.”

Angela had never truly been able to consider the full extent of Gérard’s impact on Amélie’s life before. He’d stepped in when she’d been most in need of support and company, and it made sense to her now, more than ever before, that they would feel so deeply for each other. “I’m glad he was there for you,” Angela said, and she meant it, even though a tightness in her stomach suddenly made her feel sick.

Given a different time, perhaps her meeting Amélie would have spelled out a different fate for the both of them. But every moment spent together since the visit in Paris left Angela with the taste of the truth stronger in her mouth. As much as she wanted anything but, she wondered if they’d drift apart once Amélie left the country in a few days. She started to realize that it was probably the best thing, the right thing to do—for her own sake, for Amélie’s, and for Gérard’s.

* * *

 

Amélie took quickly to holding Angela by the hand, even though the cold winter air nipped harder at their fingers for it. Angela didn’t mind all that much. The gentle way Amélie’s thumb brushed against her every now and then made her feel warm again—though, the couple of drinks in her system probably helped, too.

“Look,” Amélie said, and the prompt to focus her attention elsewhere made Angela realize that she might have been staring for a while. She turned to find whatever was up ahead. “Do you want to go over there? _Vers les manèges?_ ”

Indeed, she could see most of a small Ferris wheel from where they stood, along with the top of what looked like a merry-go-round. There were far more families and couples, and far less drunken groups, the closer they got to the flashing, whirling lights of rides and carnival games. It made Angela happy to see children able to take advantage of the festivities, too.

“Do you enjoy some competition, Docteur?” Amélie asked her in that tone of voice that sounded all too devious.

She smiled and answered cautiously, “Sure.”

“We should play some games. There’s a ticket booth over there.”

Angela couldn’t remember the last time she’d played a carnival game—or if she’d ever even played one at all. She let Amélie drag her towards the booth and thought that she seemed quite young, all of a sudden, with an open smile and a couple strips of tickets in hand. She handed one of them to Angela.

“The first to win something for the other is champion,” she said with a wink.

“Ah—so you’re planning on stealing the reward for my hard work?” Angela teased.

“ _Au contraire_ , I’m feeling generous tonight.”

Games of pure chance were immediately declared off limits, along with those too unchallenging—children’s games with rubber ducks and water guns. After several tries at different stands, Angela wondered if either of them would manage to win anything at all. Angles at which buckets hung were surely calculated never to allow a ball to rest within without tumbling out. Ringlets were surely sized too small, so as never to fit over the necks of stout green glass bottles. Maybe the carnies only let you win after spending a certain amount of money.

“This one doesn’t seem horrible,” Amélie said non-committally upon arriving at a miniature shooting range. “That guy just won, I’m sure I could do it.”

“Last chance,” Angela told her. “We’re running out of tickets.”

Amélie stepped up to the counter and picked up one of the faux rifles, tested its weight in her hands. The carnie came to meet her, and Angela quickly answered him in German when he asked if they were interested in playing. He pulled a box of pellets out from underneath the counter and loaded them into the gun before handing it back to Amélie.

“I think they mess with the sights on these, to get you to miss,” Angela said softly, one hand against her shoulder as she stood close beside her. Amélie shifted her hold on the rifle.

“I’ll just… correct in the right direction after I fire the first time.”

Her arms held steady for several long seconds. With her shot lined up, she pushed against the trigger. One perfect hole pierced the target on its outermost ring.

A slight shift and then—two, three, four, five rounds punched into paper.

The rifle quickly found its place back onto the counter, and the carnie went to replace the perforated target with a fresh one.

A small, semi-successfully muffled laugh bubbled out of Angela. “I’m sorry—but you’re a horrible shot,” she said when Amélie turned to give her a look.

“Why don’t you try it?” she said. “It’s trickier than it looks.”

Angela hummed and stepped forward to take Amélie’s place before the rifle tethered to the counter. The carnie went about reloading it again, and then handed it over to her.

Perhaps she hadn’t given Amélie enough credit. She’d been right about something being off about the gun—it shot lower than she expected, and off to the side. Carefully, she corrected her hands without relying on proper aim so much as her general awareness of where her previous bullet had landed.

Her fourth shot struck red, right at the center of the target.

Angela turned to stick her tongue out at Amélie, whose creeping smile quickly broke the deliberate pursing of her lips.

“Surgeons have steady hands,” she said. “It’s basically cheating.”

“ _La mauvaise joueuse…_ ” Angela teased. And something in her was delighted that Amélie was too caught off guard by her French to come up with a comeback. The way the lights caught the dark of her eyes made Angela feel much more stared at than usual. She cleared her throat and looked away, towards the wall of prizes beside the shooting range. “So, what do you want?” she asked her.

“The tiger,” she said after some deliberation.

“You can pick from the small ones for one shot,” the carnie explained in German as he pointed to a row of smaller stuffed toys beneath the larger ones.

“The cat, then,” she decided. He went to pluck it from its row, and Amélie thanked him for it.

The toy was hardly larger than two of her fists, and its hind legs, bent back to sit, were disproportionate in an odd way Angela couldn’t quite place. Amélie played with its ears absentmindedly as they made their way out of the carnival booths, and towards the waterfront.

“They teach you to shoot, right? When you’re a combat medic?”

“Of course,” Angela told her. “It’s a matter of self-defense. I always have a pistol on me when I’m on the field… I try not to use it, though.”

“Gérard offered to teach me a few times, but I always end up saying no. I just can’t imagine a scenario where I’d need to use one.”

“You might think I’d be the last person to say this, but it’s a useful skill. You know, just in case. Even if it’s unlikely you’ll put it into practice.”

“I suppose,” Amélie agreed. And then she smiled, slowly, and turned to Angela. “Maybe I’d have won tonight if I tried shooting something before.”

Angela rolled her eyes.

“Oh—I almost forgot,” Amélie said. She let her hold on Angela’s hand fall and dug for something in the front pocket of her pants. It was a little silver flash drive. “Here, in exchange for the cat.”

“What is it?”

She took it from between her fingers and played with its cap as she awaited an answer.

“We haven’t played together in a while. So I thought I would record myself for you, so you can have an accompaniment whenever you want.”

“That’s thoughtful, thank you,” Angela said, and she meant it with all of her heart. It made her happy, and something of the gesture was almost romantic, but for some reason, her throat tightened, and it was hard to swallow as she tucked the key into her own pocket. It felt like something of a goodbye gift—as though to say that they’d never have the chance to play together again. “I should make one for you, too. I promise I will,” she resolved.

“To tide me over until I can hear you in person again?” Amélie said, as though having somehow sensed Angela’s thinking. “I’d love that.”

* * *

 

They managed to find a rather empty stretch of railing, not far from the water, when the crowd began to migrate in anticipation of the fireworks. Amélie stepped up onto it, swung her legs over, and took a seat as Angela followed suit. It was cold to the touch, but not uncomfortable with their coats carefully tucked beneath them. The bars were wide and easy to balance on without effort. It helped to lean against each other, shoulder to shoulder.

“Are the fireworks nice in Paris?”

“Yeah,” Amélie said. “But it’s ten times as crowded, so I never end up going out to see them. Some of my friends have decent views from their apartments, though. Makes a good place for a New Year’s party.”

“It’s never too bad here. Even if it gets cold.”

“I like Zurich,” she agreed.

“It’s grown on you, has it?”

“I’d say so,” Amélie said. “Maybe too much.” She found Angela’s hand where it rested in her lap and held onto it, and they stayed that way, unmoving.

A great hush came over the crowd as soon as the first of the fireworks went off—and Angela loved this part, the one where all the lights in the sky hit the water in the basin, and everything was quiet except for the pop and crackle that followed every flared bouquet.

Her face was cold, but her ears grew warm when Amélie leaned close to whisper, “ _Bonne Année_ , Angela.”

And she felt the heat spread to her cheeks and down her chest when Amélie’s hand found the side of her face and her lips found a place on her skin, too close to the corner of her mouth.

_“Es guets Nöis_ , Amélie.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Resources on Swiss/Zurich German are kinda scarce so I apologize if I got it wrong at the end there. Please let me know if I need to change it!


	11. Chapter 11

Angela lay in half slumber, cheek pressed to her desk, when the rattle of her phone startled her upright. Weggli sat curled in her lap, but she’d woken at the noise, too, and they stared blearily at each other for a moment, just long enough for Angela to step out of her daze.

At half past 10 on a Sunday night, reasons for a call couldn’t fall under anything but emergencies—unless, of course, it was Amélie. She called, every once in a while, at odd times, if something was on her mind. It never bothered Angela.

She picked up quickly.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Angela. It’s me, I—I’m sorry, I realize it’s late.”

“Gérard,” Angela realized, and it struck her as odd, because Gérard hardly ever called, and if he did, never so late, never for anything that couldn’t wait until the next day. His tone was light and friendly as usual, but something cautious weighed his words down.

Angela cleared her throat, and when she spoke again, she sounded less groggy. “You’re fine. I was just… working on some things,” she said. Anxiety started to crawl up her chest and tightened her breath as she worried—selfishly, she would think, later—that something might have happened, that some truth had escaped to incriminate her. Her and Amélie. She swallowed. “Is everything alright?”

“Yeah, yeah, everything’s fine. I, um—God, I’m sorry.” He paused, and it was quiet until a nervous laugh came across the line. “I haven’t been able to get a hold of Amélie since I got home, and I guess I thought that she might be with you… or maybe she mentioned if she was going somewhere. I don’t know.”

It hadn’t sounded like he’d finished, but he didn’t continue, either, so Angela eventually answered, “No, I haven’t seen her since New Year’s.” She was starting to feel lucid, finally, with her initial anxiety dispelled and her mind pulling out from a sleepy fog. “She didn’t mention anything.”

“Alright. I’m sorry I bothered you with this. It’s nothing to worry about,” he said, and it sounded much more like he was reassuring himself than he was reassuring Angela. “I’m sure she’ll be home any minute.”

There was a pause, uncomfortable silence, for a second too long before Angela quickly asked, “She’s not… Isn’t her flight tomorrow morning? How long has she been…” It felt wrong to say _missing_ ; it assumed the worst _._ “…unreachable? I mean, she can’t have gone far—”

“I know, that’s partially why I just can’t help but…” Another pause, a half-finished thought. Angela waited, without realizing she was holding her breath until she felt as though she’d suffocate all over again—a new kind of anxiety. “You know what?” Gérard said, finally, “I just realized I didn’t check in at the dance studio. She’s been going a lot, lately—new season and everything. I’m sure she’s hiding away over there. Lost track of time.”

Angela inhaled slowly, deeply. She wondered what dance studio stayed open past 10pm. But when she answered, it was with a calm she sensed Gérard needed to hear, “Alright. I’m sure you’re right.” Maybe he wanted reassurance he hadn’t dragged someone into worrying along with him.

“Sorry again, Angela.”

“It’s no trouble,” she said, and before he could say goodbye, quickly cut in, “And Gérard?”

She took his silence as invitation to go on.

“Would you—” It felt stupid, now, to say it, maybe inappropriate, even, or selfish, at the very least. But she’d started and now she was going to finish. “Would you mind letting me know, when she gets home?” She grimaced, hearing herself say it, and her hand balled into a fist as the question hung there.

“Yes, of course.”

“Thanks.” Her fist relaxed but her shoulders remained tense. She worried at her bottom lip.

“Goodnight, Angela.”

“Goodnight.”

She hung up with a horrid weight sinking through her gut that would keep her up for many more nights than this one.    

* * *

 

When Angela did find sleep in the week following, it was never at the right time, let alone in the right place. A blanket and pillow had permanently migrated to her office couch—generously called so, since it only seated two comfortably. Extra shirts and pants lived at the bottom of her locker, and if it weren’t for Weggli, she might not have visited home at all. One of her neighbors, the only one the cat liked, took care of her on nights Angela didn’t make it back. 

She couldn’t stand it there, lately. Her head grew too empty. Worry monopolized her free time. Work, though—work was too important to be crumpled and tossed to a corner of the room the way she’d done with most her hobbies and self-care. There was sanity in work.

It’s what she told herself on nights like these, nights she sat by the lone light of her desk lamp, in her empty office, long after most of the labs had closed up. Headquarters was never truly empty, so Angela was never truly alone, she reasoned, with all the night owls and late workers rushing to meet deadlines. There were field agents around, too—mostly Blackwatch. They never spilled their inner workings to outsiders, but Angela was high up enough to know some things, at least. And even in the deadest hours of the night— _especially_ in the deadest hours of the night—she could almost feel their movements about the halls in the wing below. Her radar seemed to pick them up with all the more acuity since it had all happened. She knew Gérard had dozens of men set out to the task, and wondered if he was still here tonight, too—searching in circles, as ever.

“Late night again?”

The voice made her jump in her seat before she turned to see who’d come. “Jesse—God, you scared me.”

“I knocked.”

“Right, sorry,” she said, sighing, turning back to her computer, even though she wasn’t reading anything on screen anymore. She wasn’t in the mood to talk—she hardly ever was, lately, even if it was just Jesse.

He paced about the room for no less than a full minute, and still Angela didn’t turn to look at him. She listened to the clunk of his boots against the flooring until he stopped somewhere behind her.

“Didn’t know they had complimentary hotel service in the labs here,” he said.

She turned her chair, finally, to look at him. “What did you want, Jesse?” It wasn’t rude when she said it, only tired.

“Been a while since you moved your car, Angie,” he said.

It was quiet as she let the chair spin back just a quarter of the way to facing her desk again. She looked at the window, but not out it. It was too dark, and all she could see was their reflection on the glass. “I’ve been busy, that’s all,” she said. “And that suits me, so...”

“Angie, let me take you home.”

“You’re not going to buy me a drink first?” she joked, but her voice was flat.

Jesse stepped towards her until he’d made it to the corner of her desk. “I’ll buy you a drink if it means getting you out of here. Dinner, too—you been eating, Doc? I’m not an expert on health—”

“I’m fine, really,” she said, and when she looked up, she couldn’t hold his gaze for long.

“C’mon,” he said. “I was gonna go for a drive, anyways. I won’t get lost if I take you with me.”

“You’re not going to leave my office unless I say yes.”

“Well, I don’t mind sleeping on the couch there, but I don’t know where you’ll sleep.”

Angela rolled her eyes. “Fine. Let’s go.”

She tidied up her desk just enough that she wouldn’t dread sifting through her mess when she came in tomorrow, and under Jesse’s eye, didn’t bother trying to carry even one folder of work off with her. She had files she could access online, anyways, if she was itching to do something more once she was alone again.

They passed her car in the parking lot, and it was exactly as she’d left it a couple of days ago. She wouldn’t have managed to lie about having left recently even if she’d wanted to; the layer of snow behind her wheels was thicker, untouched, compared to those surrounding neighboring cars. She’d drive it out tomorrow—because Jesse wanted to drive her home. Maybe it was to make sure that she wouldn’t come back herself in the middle of the night, that she’d have to wait until he picked her up again in the morning on his way in. She could have found it insulting, but she knew, somewhere, that he was right in all this.

She tried to let the welcome thought of curling up in her own bed, with a cup of tea and Weggli at her side, overpower that creeping stress that left her too worried at night to sleep. When she slept at work, it was only because her body gave her no choice, because coffee could only work for so long.

She lasted maybe two minutes after Jesse started the engine, before breaking past whatever barrier, whatever understanding, had been set that they’d let it all rest for a moment. She couldn’t help herself. “Are there any updates?”

Jesse sighed. “Not that I know of, Angie,” he said. “It’s not my assignment, anyways.”

“You still hear things, though,” she insisted. “More than I do.”

“Nothing new.”

“I mean surely there are… progress reports? I don’t know. Gérard doesn’t mention anything when he sees you?”

“Of course he does.” She could tell Jesse was trying not to let himself grow irritable. “It’s all the guy can fucking talk about. Like a broken record the past week.”

Angela grew quiet. She thought she might have been able to talk about things with Jesse, but maybe she’d been wrong.

“Look, I’m sorry,” he said softly. “It’s not that I don’t wanna talk about it, or that I don’t care. It’s just… sad, after a while.”

“Not talking about it doesn’t make it any less sad.”

“No,” Jesse told her, like she’d missed the point. He looked out at the snowy road ahead, away from her. “I mean it’s sad watching him so broken over it. Seeing you broken, too.”

She didn’t know what to say to that. Was it selfish of them? Selfish of Gérard to send out an entire task force just for his missing wife? Selfish of Angela to act the way that she did? Selfish of them both not to think much on anything or anyone else? It wasn’t the way Jesse had meant it, but she couldn’t help thinking it.

Sometimes she thought that it wasn’t right for her to be so upset—that she had no place being as upset as Gérard over all of it.

“It comes out different,” he went on. “Everything’s on the outside with him—angry, frustrated. Explosive. He’s on the field as much as he can be, even though that’s probably just what Talon wants… And then with you… it’s all closed doors, Angie.” He paused, either to catch a breath or offer a window for an explanation that never came. “You keep it all inside, but it’s not like I can’t tell.”

“I’m just trying to stay sane,” she told him. “I try not to hope too much, because she might never be coming back.” Angela felt herself start to choke up at that, but she cleared her throat and swallowed the constricting feeling away. “But I also try not to give up, or to mourn just yet, because she could still be out there somewhere. Alone and scared… and—God, this is so _fucked_ up.”

She held her head close to the window, looking out at nothing in particular as the city streets scrolled past her in a blur. She didn’t know where to hold her hopes. Was she foolish for entertaining the possibility that Amélie was still out there at all? After how many weeks was she supposed to give up? Amélie’s death would ruin her, but being kept guessing was a different sort of pain entirely.

“I know, Angela.”

“I just wish it’d been anyone— _anyone_ but her.” Anyone who’d had basic training in interrogation and torture resistance, anyone who wasn’t a damn civilian, anyone who wasn’t her Amélie. “It’s not fair.”

* * *

 

The following week, when Angela has started giving up on prodding various Blackwatch members for updates on the search mission, Ana came knocking at her office door. She was cautious when she entered, almost uneasy, which was completely uncharacteristic. That she shut the door behind her doubly tipped Angela off as to what the conversation was to be about.

She dropped the papers she held onto the coffee table, and with her elbows resting on her knees, joined her hands together. “Captain,” she greeted her. “What can I help you with?”

“Do you have a few minutes, Angela?” she asked, with one hand placed against the backrest of the armchair facing Angela. “It’s about Amélie.”

Ana was to the point as ever, and she appreciated that about her. Most people tiptoed around the subject far too much lately. Angela was starting to wonder if it all hadn’t started to dull her emotionally—like her nerves had reached an upper limit on how much stress they could handle, and decided to shut off entirely instead. She didn’t sleep any more easily for it, though.

“Of course,” she said quickly. She wondered, hopeful, if she had news to share about the investigation. “Sit.”

Ana hesitated for a second, as though this might all be over quickly enough that she shouldn’t bother with sitting down at all, and that made Angela’s heart drop. Had they found her dead?

But Ana took a seat.

“Is it bad news?” Angela asked, and her voice betrayed her worry.

“No—I’m afraid there’s no news at all.” Which was bad news of its own kind, but at least not the worst of news. “I wanted to ask you a few questions, actually.”

That surprised Angela. She’d already gone through a routine interrogation after Amélie’s disappearance—when she'd last seen her, when she’d last heard from her, if Amélie had mentioned wanting to leave her life behind, and other questions of the sort.

“Sure,” she said.

“I already checked in with Gérard about all this, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to run it by you, too, since the two of you were close.” Angela didn’t like that Ana referred to her in the past tense already, but maybe she hadn’t meant it that way. She let her go on. “Do you have any idea as to… the extent of Amélie’s knowledge on Blackwatch? Its operations, its members, its bases, anything at all, really.”

“What does that matter?” Angela asked too quickly. “It’s not like it’s going to help the investigation, and knowing what she knows won’t help keep that information away from Talon.”

“I’m just… trying to assess where we stand,” she replied, choosing her words carefully, so as not to set anything off in Angela. “I need to look out for our other agents as much as I’m looking out for Amélie—which is a lot, if there was any doubt on that.”

Angela sighed. “She didn’t know much,” she said after a little while.

“But what _did_ she know?”

“No base locations, no names of agents other than Gérard’s friends… as far as I know.”

“Gérard told me she knew of Blackwatch, knew it’s name, but that he’d never mentioned much else.”

Ana seemed to be waiting for some sort of confirmation, so Angela nodded. “He probably has a better idea than I do,” she admitted. “We talked about Blackwatch only a couple of times at most, but it wasn’t…”

“You never disclosed anything to her?”

“No,” she said. But then she remembered that that wasn’t entirely true. “Though... she met Moira, briefly. One time when she came here. She asked me if she was a part of Blackwatch, and I told her she was. But that's... irrelevant, nothing big.”

Ana hummed, thinking.

“I really don’t think she knew anything that Talon doesn’t know already,” Angela told her. “Aside from… personal things about Gérard, obviously.”

“And about you.”

She’d never considered that, really. On paper, she wasn’t an important part of Amélie’s life at all. They’d met less than one year ago; Angela was a wisp of nothing, a passing wind in her life story. But Amélie had come to learn some things about her—about her habits.

“I guess so,” she agreed.

“I know you’ve been spending a lot of time here lately, Angela,” Ana told her. She looked down at the stack of papers she’d left on the table that sat between them, and didn’t look back up to meet her eyes when she continued, “And I worry for you, I do. But I think I’d worry more if you spent less time on base. I know that you’re safe here—at least safer than you would be on the streets, or in your own home. It’s… the lesser of two evils, I suppose. I’ve told Gérard the same thing. I know it’s selfish, but I worry about the both of you.”

“It’s not selfish,” Angela said. Ana had no strong attachment to Amélie, but Angela was sure her disappearance, along with the effect it had on those close to her, had hit a lot of people at headquarters with a real sense of vulnerability—a reminder that danger was real and unpredictable. It had been Amélie, but it very well could have been any agent on base, or anyone else’s friend or family. “Thank you, Ana.”

“I’m sorry for bringing it all up, if you were focused on other things,” she said as she made to stand up again. Angela wondered if her purpose for stopping by hadn’t been more so for the sake of alerting her to possible danger than to dissect any new information on Amélie’s case. Perhaps it was a bit of both.

“Don’t worry about it,” Angela said. “It’s not something I’ve been able to stop thinking about in the first place.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the lack of Amélie in this one. There are gonna be a few chapters here and there where only one of the ladies features bc of necessary plot stuff—I hope those don't end up being too boring, cause I know their interactions are what we're all here for.  
> We're getting close to the end of part 1 of the story!


End file.
